The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing A Finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction & Wainwright Prize for Nature WritingA #1 Sunday Times Bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice From acclaimed author and critic Olivia Laing comes The Garden Against Time, a spellbinding blend of memoir, cultural history, and environmental reflection, inspired by the restoration of her own overgrown garden in the English countryside. As Laing breathes life into an 18th-century walled garden in Suffolk, she embarks on a deeper exploration: Who gets to live in paradise? And what are the costs—social, ecological, and historical—of creating it? 🌱 Combines nature writing with literary criticism and political insight🌱 Explores themes of environmental justice, privilege, climate change, and collective imagination🌱 Draws from John Milton, William Morris, Derek Jarman, and other visionaries From aristocratic estates built on exploitation to radical communal utopias and wartime