Skip to main content
The lost Tasmanian tiger’s legacy

A Flame of Thylacines

Charlotte Van den Broeck

In her highly anticipated second prose work, award-winning author explores the lost Tasmanian tiger’s legacy. In this compelling book, Charlotte Van den Broeck follows traces of the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Her journey takes her from zoos and natural history collections in Europe to the depths of the bush in Lutruwita; Tasmania, along the paths of philosophy, science and fiction.

It is a tour de force
De Tijd

Drawing on the tragic ecological history of the Tasmanian tiger, she reflects on loss, on hope in times of climate crisis, and the destructive and restorative powers of stories.

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.