Ten books to reconfigure our conception of nature for the better

Michael Christie is the author of the novel If I Fall, If I Die, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Kirkus Prize, was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice Pick, and was on numerous best-of 2015 lists. His linked collection of stories, The Beggar's Garden, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction, and won the Vancouver Book Award. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Globe & Mail.

Greenwood, his most recent novel, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

At the Guardian, Christie tagged ten top works of eco-fiction, including:

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

In her bold and strange novel, Watkins disassembles the mythology of the American west, paying particular attention to its brutal expansionism and unquestioned promise of personal reinvention. The story concerns a young couple trying to navigate post-apocalyptic California, where severe drought has baked the once fertile landscape into sandstorms and squalor. Peopled by wandering cults and water dowsers, Gold Fame Citrus shows us that perhaps the notions of “Shangri-La” and “Man-Made Hell on Earth” are two sides of the same ideological coin.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue