2026 SHORTLIST
Adam Weymouth
Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe
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.
Adam Weymouth
Adam Weymouth is a writer and journalist, based in coastal Kent. His first book, Kings of the Yukon, tells the story of his 2000 mile canoe trip down the Yukon River through Canada and Alaska, exploring the decline of the king salmon and how their disappearance is impacting on the many people and ecosystems that depend on them. The book won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, The Lonely Planet/ Stanfords Adventure Travel Book of the Year and the Prix Paul-Emile Victor.
His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Granta, the Observer, the Atlantic and the BBC, and he was selected by the National Centre for Writing as one of ten writers shaping the UK’s future.
