Hidden Nature

Shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2018

I now see that this journey on the water was about finding an external correlation to my inner world. I needed a transmutable world, a fluid space that would allow me to make my own changes.

Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, the Guardian's award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart.

Her book is about looking beneath the surface, noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. Hidden Nature is also the story of Alys Fowler's emotional journey and her coming out as a gay woman.

Beautifully written, honest and very moving, it’s a book about fluidity, change and what happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care.

Above all, this book is about losing and finding, exploring familiar places and discovering unknown horizons. A book that examines what it means to change and encourages everyone to pay greater attention to the natural world that lies in even the most ordinary, urban and industrial spaces.

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• ISBN: 9781473623026
• Number of pages: 240
• Weight: 175g
• Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 14 mm