The Book
How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds.
A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals—human and other—Being a Beast mingles neuroscience and psychology, nature writing and memoir to cross the boundaries separating the species. It is an extraordinary journey full of thrills and surprises, humor and joy. And, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the human experience in our world, carried out by exploring the full range of the life around us.
Author
Charles Foster is a writer, traveller, veterinarian and barrister.
He is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford.
His books cover many fields. They include books on travel, evolutionary biology, natural history, anthropology, theology, archaeology, philosophy and law. Ultimately they are all attempts to answer the questions ‘Who or what are we?’, and ‘what on earth are we doing here?
His latest book is ‘Being a Beast’, which is published in the UK by Profile Books and in the US by Metropolitan Books.
He read veterinary medicine and law at Cambridge, and is a qualified veterinary surgeon. He holds a PhD in law/bioethics from the University of Cambridge.
He teaches Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Oxford. He is a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and a Research Associate at the Ethox Centre and the HeLEX Centre, all at the University of Oxford. He retains an active interest in veterinary medicine – particularly veterinary acupuncture and general wildlife and large animal medicine.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
He is married, with six children, and lives in Oxford.
Excerpt: In Which I Try to Become a Swift
There are two classes of words commonly applied to swifts: words about ethereality, and violent words. They are not contradictory. The violence makes the ethereal accessible. Swifts lay open the sky so that we can go there. They slash the veil.
If the swifts didn’t come, we’d be stuck with what we’ve got. They were very late this year. Panic rose. I’d get up very early, thinking that I’d heard a scream, and rush to the window. There was nothing there but pigeons as ponderous as I am: pigeons who sleep in trees and waddle in the dirt. And then, as I was lying on my back, they were suddenly there. “Why are you crying, Daddy?” said Rachel, who was watching my face instead of the sky. “Because it’s all right,” I said. “Because the world still works.” “Okay,” she said. They’re always suddenly there or suddenly not there. |
Praise
“A tour de force of modern nature writing... that shows us how to better love the world beyond ourselves.”
—The Guardian
“This year’s H is for Hawk, the book leaves you feeling that perhaps Helen MacDonald’s bestseller might have been improved if she had only tried to fly.”
—World Travel Guide
“Living like an animal in order to write about it sounds like a gimmick. It isn’t. Groundbreaking? Definitely.”
—The Scotsman |
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