A beautifully vivid memoir about resilience and learning to belong, set in the elemental landscape of Iceland's Westfjords.

Visiting Iceland as an anthropologist and filmmaker in 2008, Sarah Thomas is spellbound by its otherworldly landscape. An immediate love for this country and for Bjarni, a man she meets there, turns a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically alters Sarah’s understanding of herself and of the living world.

She embarks on a relationship not only with Bjarni, but with the light, the language and the old wooden house they make their home. She finds a place where the light of the midwinter full moon reflected by snow can be brighter than daylight, where the earth can tremor at any time, and where the word for echo – bergmál – translates as ‘the language of the mountain’.

In the midst of crisis both personal and planetary, as her marriage falls apart, Sarah finds inspiration in the artistry of a raven’s nest: a home which persists through breaking and reweaving – over and over.

Written in beautifully vivid prose The Raven’s Nest is a profoundly moving meditation on place, identity and how we might live in an era of environmental disruption.

“Deeply thoughtful, vivid, enquiring….A fascinating journey.’ Robert Macfarlane, author

TICKETS

This is a seated event so tickets are very limited. Tickets are £5 (to include a refreshment). There will be an opportunity to buy The Raven’s Nest on the day at a discount. This event will be a mix of Q&A and a reading. Inspired by the Icelandic tradition of kvöldvaka, the audience is warmly invited to bring knitting and mending projects to do as Sarah reads. Please email Jules on jules@northbooks.co.uk or pop into the shop to reserve your space.

At North Books, 4 Castle Street, Hay-on-Wye on Saturday 16 September, 4-5pm.

THE AUTHOR

Sarah Thomas is a writer and documentary filmmaker with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She is committed to work that explores our entanglements with the living world. Her films have been screened internationally. She has been a regular contributor to Dark Mountain journal, and her writing has also appeared in the Guardian and the anthology Women On Nature edited by Katharine Norbury. In 2020 she was nominated for the Arts Foundation Environmental Writing Award. She was longlisted for the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize and shortlisted for the 2021 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize.