A Flame of Thylacines
In her highly anticipated second prose work, award-winning author Charlotte Van den Broeck explores the legacy of the lost Tasmanian tiger. In this compelling book, she traces the extinct animal’s footsteps from zoos and natural history collections in Europe to the depths of the bush in Lutruwita (Tasmania), navigating the intersections of philosophy, science, and fiction.
Drawing on the tragic ecological history of the Tasmanian tiger, she reflects on loss, on hope in times of climate crisis, and on the destructive and restorative powers of stories.
It is a tour de forceDe Tijd
Intriguing, genre-crossing studies of an animal.De Groene Amsterdammer
In this fascinating account of her quest, Charlotte Van den Broeck connects science, history, biology and ecology and brings together the information she gathered and her own insights about loss, homesickness, and finding what you might not have been looking for. She reconstructs how the Tasmanian tiger is becoming a global symbol of man-made extinction. She tries to fathom how it is possible that the loss of the animal causes such deep sadness, when very specifically, a million species of animals and plants are currently threatened with extinction.
Like her previous non-fiction work, she is looking for a larger theme; how stories shape our world.Knack
This book is a plea for empathetic thinking, for attentiveness, and for a dignified, thoughtful and accommodating relationship with the nature that surrounds us. In doing so, it also immediately constitutes an indictment of the Grand Narratives of the West.
