The Outrun

9 hrs. 3 min.

Miscellaneous

Language Russian

Author Amy Liptrot

Narrator Nadezhda Vinokurova

Description

A literary debut that brought the author, journalist Amy Liptrot (born 1984), the Wainwright Prize for the best nature book of 2016 and the British PEN Club prize for best autobiography (PEN Ackerley Prize) in 2017 is a story about escaping noisy London for the tidal meadows of the Orkney Islands. Told in the form of an unguarded diary, it documents how the heroine-narrator finds herself through a fight with false attachments—cigarettes, Coca-Cola, relationships, the internet—that replaced the city’s experiences with alcohol and drugs. Once, young Amy left a remote island of the archipelago in the far north-east of Scotland to conquer the capital of the kingdom by joining the legion of freelancers in the creative industries. Now she makes the journey back, discovering the wild power of the Atlantic Ocean along the way and reconciling the past with the present. What began as forced self-isolation turned into the birth of a new life.

The book became a notable event in contemporary British prose, sparking a fashion for a half-forgotten corner of Scotland’s coastline.