Desert Solitaire
by Edward Abbey
Abbey’s classic of landscape writing emerged from a season spent as a (lone) ranger at what is now Arches National Park in Utah. A series of vignettes, essays on natural history and polemical essays are built together to create a mosaic of remote desert life.
Recommendations from our site
“Abbey is full of passion, fury and contempt – a fiery fighter to shake up the sometimes over-tranquil atmosphere of nature writing.” Read more...
Robert Macfarlane, Literary Scholar
“He has a deep love for this place and he’s amusing to read because he’s such a strong personality. His writing is extraordinary.” Read more...
The best books on The American Desert
Hari Kunzru, Journalist
In my late twenties I also felt that I was in danger of going through life without ever having felt fully alive. I remember reading Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and feeling that, like him, I wanted to lick the bare bones of existence clean, and to see the world, if only for one moment, as it is, on its own terms, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities: ‘To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself.’
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