Savage Gods: A crisis of words

After moving with his wife and children to a smallholding in Ireland, Paul Kingsnorth expected to find contentment. It was the goal he had sought – to nest and to find home – after years of rootlessness as an environmental activist and author. Instead he found that his tools as a writer were failing him, calling into question his foundational beliefs about language and setting him at odds with himself. Informed by his travels across the world, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Annie Dillard, and the day-today travails of farming his own land, ‘Savage Gods’ asks: what does it mean to belong? What sacrifices must be made in order to truly inhabit a life? And can words ever paint the truth of the world – or are they part of the great lie which is killing it?