Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SHERBORNE PRIZE FOR TRAVEL WRITING
SHORTLISTED FOR THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE

AN ECONOMIST, OBSERVER, AND TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2025
A FINANCIAL TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES SUMMER READING PICK

‘AN EXCEPTIONAL BOOK.’ Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland
‘A BOLD, BEAUTIFUL, CONFRONTING JOURNEY.’ Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
‘EVERY PAGE SINGS.’ Rachel Clarke, Observer

From the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award comes an epic walk across the Alps in the footsteps of a wolf, throwing unique light on Europe’s mountainous hinterlands at a moment of political and environmental change.

In 2011, a young wolf named Slavc set out from Slovenia. Tracked by GPS, he travelled a thousand miles through the Alps, arriving four months later on the Lessinian plateau, north of Verona. There had been no wolves in northern Italy for a century, but here he crossed paths with a female wolf on a walkabout of her own. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves back in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting.

In Lone Wolf, Weymouth walks Slavc’s path, examining the changes facing these wild corners of Europe. Here, the call to rewild meets the urge to preserve culture; nationalism and globalisation pull apart; climate change is radically changing lives; and migrants, too, are on the move.

The result is a multifaceted account of a region caught in a moment of kaleidoscopic flux, from an award-winning writer with a uniquely perceptive eye for detail.