Death by Landscape

From the acclaimed author of the novel Oval comes a book of “fan nonfiction” about living and writing in the age of extinction

In this constellation of essays, Elvia Wilk asks what kinds of stories will help us rethink our human perspective toward Earth. The book begins as an exploration of the role of narrative today and becomes a deep interrogation of the writing process and the self.

Wilk examines creative works across time and genre in order to break down binaries between dystopia and utopia, real and imagined, self and world. She makes connections between works by such wide-ranging writers as Mark Fisher, Karen Russell, Han Kang, Doris Lessing, Jenny Hval, Anne Carson, Octavia Butler, Michelle Tea, Helen Phillips, Jonathan Lethem, Kathe Koja, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Hildegard von Bingen.

What happens when research becomes fandom or even obsession, when the observer breaks through the glass? Through the eye of the fan, this collection delves into literal and literary world-building projects—medieval monasteries, solarpunk futures, vampire role-plays, environments devoid of humans—bridging the micro and the macro and revealing how our relationship to narrative shapes our relationships to the natural world and to one another.