Tom Fort
They Come Over Here…
Where Do Camels Belong? The Story and Science of Invasive Species
By Ken Thompson
Profile Books 272pp £10.99 order from our bookshop
It so happened that, the morning before I began reading this timely and enlightening book about the impact of invasive species, there was an item on Radio 4’s Today programme about the discovery in a reservoir in Berkshire of a colony of quagga mussels, a small, resourceful and fecund bivalve originating in Ukraine. There was an interview with the ecologist leading the research team, introduced with a typical specimen of journalistic hype in which the presenter referred to the quagga as a ‘nasty piece of work’ and alleged that it formed part of what the researchers dubbed ‘invasional meltdown’.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
The minimalist Fumio Sasaki 'confesses that as he began to purchase fewer consumer goods, his meals shrank in size. He decluttered and lost weight. Accumulation is not just an economic way of life but a form of embodiment too. Enlightenment is reduction.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/gardens-of-emptiness
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3
It's 'all lively and entertaining but rather too black and white. Her account of British politics and the success of the Brexit campaign verges on the cartoonish.'
@David_Goodhart on Anne Applebaum's 'Twilight on Democracy'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-tale-of-two-parties