The World of Wandering Animals

Nina Burton

The August Prize winning author of The Gutenberg Galaxy and Notes from a Summer Cottage is back with a new exceptional nature memoir

If Notes from a Summer Cottage was about the local animals surrounding Nina Burton’s small summer house, The World of Wandering Animals takes us on a winding journey, from the very north of Norway, to animals in captivity in Swedish animal parks, and lastly to the wild savannahs of Africa. It begins with an eye operation. As Nina’s vision is blurred, surging like the sea, perhaps this change can help her really get closer to the perspective of the creatures living under the waves? And so, she goes to northern Norway to participate in a whale-watching excursion. We learn that fish living in captivity have fewer brain neurons, that the World Bank values a living whale at 2 million pounds, and about the mysterious Greenland shark that lives for centuries.

Behind the secure bars of the animal park we learn about giraffes’ 360 degree vision, the gender roles of hyenas, and Biruté Galdika who came to Borneo in the 1970s to study orangutans. Soon though, the bars of the parks seem just as the surface of the sea – an impenetrable barrier between the observer and the observed, and a longing to see the animals following their true nature is born. The journey goes on to the Serengeti.

With inspiring curiosity, Nina brings us on an expedition filled with personal musings woven together with scientific exploration in her newest nature memoir. Nina reminds us of everything we risk losing while the world is rapidly becoming inhabitable for so many species beyond our own.