Strangers

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE

In Strangers, Rebecca Tamás explores where the human and nonhuman meet, and why this delicate connection just might be the most important relationship of our times. From ‘On Watermelon’ to ‘On Grief’, Tamás’s essays are exhilarating to read in their radical and original exploration of the links between the environmental, the political, the folkloric and the historical. From thinking stones, to fairgrounds, from colliding planets to transformative cockroaches, Tamás’s lyrical perspective takes the reader on a journey between body, land and spirit—exploring a new ecological vision for our fractured, fragile world.

Essays:

On Watermelon • On Hospitality • On Panpscychism • On Greenness • On Pain • On Grief • On Mystery

A fascinating, lyrical exploration of the eco-political, from human and non-human bodies to landscapes. Tamás’ essays are deeply rooted in folklore and the fragility of existence. A stunning work of enquiry and eloquence.

—­­­ Sinéad Gleeson

So full of insight, compassion and reason. – Anthony Anaxagorou

Rebecca Tamás creates a shifting perspective in her essays which illuminates while giving unexpected pleasure. – Amit Chaudhuri

Bursting with intellectual generosity. Deep wide roots and radical shoots. —­­­ Max Porter

To read Rebecca Tamás is to feel weirdly, uncannily creaturely, and to see all around us as pulsing with meaning. —­­­ Katherine Angel

Strangers is a much-needed lesson in how to love—unconditionally and immeasurably—a dying world. —­­­ Jessica J. Lee

Erudite yet intimate, moving yet fierce, Rebecca Tamás’ hungry exploration of the world – occurring at the porous boundary between literary forms – made me rethink what it means to be humane. —­­­ Olivia Sudjic

Rebecca Tamás writes searingly on loss, transformation, art and the body. Her writing is tender and sharp, brimming with heat. —­­­ Nina Mingya Powles

Strangers is an extraordinary, essential book. Both quiet and loud. Strange yet explicit. —­­­ Sara Baume

exciting and clear-eyed. —­­­ Melissa Harrison

These essays are sharp, purposeful, moving and strange: necessary writing for now. —­­­ Jenn Ashworth

‘he writing in these essays is luminous and urgent, intensely intimate and wildly global. Strangers is an intricate exploration of environmental precarity, literary strangeness, and the importance of the nonhuman. —­­­ Naomi Booth

Strangers is a work of generous, optimistic curiosity, one which forgoes the easy promise of a world to come and invites us instead into a relationship of charged “feral intimacy” with a world that is already here. —­­­ Sam Byers

Tamás builds a world so intimate for us here, teaching us how to unlearn and relearn, relive and relove. – Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal

This text is an echoing, unstoppable bell. – Caught by the River (book of the month)

A passionate and poetic exercise in empathy for everything. – Between Two Books

a beautiful exploration of our relationship with nature. – Idler

intriguing and generous. – New Statesman

The essays appear not as fragments but as portals, dropping deep into the currents of contemporary ecological thought and lived experience… – Amy Clarkson, SPAM