Late Light: 'An astonishing read' - AMY LIPTROT, AUTHOR OF THE OUTRUN

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Description

This is a book about falling in love with vanishing things

Late Light is the story of Michael Malay's own journey, an Indonesian-Australian-American making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines. Mixing natural history with memoir, this book explores the mystery of our animal neighbours, in all their richness and variety. It is about the wonder these animals inspired in our ancestors, the hope they inspire in us, and the joy they might still hold for our children.

Late Light is about migration, belonging and extinction. Through the close examination of four particular 'unloved' animals - eels, moths, crickets and mussels - Michael Malay tells the story of the economic, political and cultural events that have shaped the modern landscape of Britain.

For readers of Robert Macfarlane, Raynor Winn and Helen Macdonald, Late Light is a rich blend of memoir, natural history, nature writing, and a meditation on being and belonging, from a vibrant new voice.

Author Bio

Michael Malay is a writer and teacher based in Bristol. He spent his early years in Jakarta, Indonesia, before moving to Australia with his family at the age of ten. His creative writing has been widely published, including in Little Toller's online magazine The Clearing (of which he was also a co-editor), The Willowherb Review and Dark Mountain. In 2019, an early extract from Late Light>was shortlisted for the Nan Shepherd prize, and he is in the early stages of research for a new book, Four Funerals, which explores mourning rituals from different cultures. A chapter from that book, 'American Blue', was recently shortlisted for the Wasafiri Writing Prize (autumn, 2020).