Helen Macdonald
What does nature mean to us - and what do we mean to it?
Animals don't exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.
From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk comes Vesper Flights, a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Where could this book be presented more appropriately than in the idyllic setting of the Old Botanical Gardens?
Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best-loved writing along with new pieces covering a thrilling range of subjects. There are essays here on headaches, on catching swans, on hunting mushrooms, on twentieth-century spies, on numinous experiences and high-rise buildings; on nests and wild pigs and the tribulations of farming ostriches.
Vesper Flights is a book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make the world around us. Moving and frank, personal and political, it confirms Helen Macdonald as one of this century's greatest nature writers. A perfect read for anyone looking for renewed appreciation for the natural world.
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist and historian of science. Their books include H is for Hawk, which won many prizes including the Costa Book of the Year and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and the Sunday Times bestselling Vesper Flights. They live in Suffolk with their two parrots.
The conversation will be in English, the book excerpts will be read in German.
If the event takes place outside, we will start half an hour later: at 20.30. (The door opening remains the same: at 19.00)
If the weather is bad or uncertain, the event will take place indoors at Kaufleuten.
Organized by the bookstore Hottingerplatz.
Enjoy sandwiches, snacks and drinks at the festival bar. Open from 7 pm.
Treat yourself to a fine dinner before the event at Kaufleuten Restaurant, open from 6pm.