the stranger in the woods michael finkel 2017

This book's promise is simple: If we're lucky enough to find him, we may find ourselves one step closer to perfection' - Michael Paterniti, bestselling author of The Telling Room and Driving Mr Albert `Michael Finkel has somehow found a story that takes the two primary human relationships - to nature and to one another - and deftly upends our assumptions about both. In some sacred forest place the hermit waits for us: he is us.

His investigation runs deep, summoning not only his surprising, poignant friendship with the book's protagonist, but also the human history of our own attempts to find meaning in a noisy world. Every life choice we make comes with a price, and Knight's can be tallied in moments of serenity and winters survived, or in break-ins and stolen propane tanks - the final calculus, astonishing, poignant, and vexing as it is, falls to us' - John Valliant, bestselling author of The Tiger 'Michael Finkel has done something magical with this profound book: He's written a gripping modern parable about how one man did the unthinkable, walked away from life as we know it to find a sort of happiness in isolation and silence. Chris Knight is an American original, a man who kept himself hidden from all other humans for more than a quarter of a century. The Stranger in the Woods is an altogether surprising page-turner that helps us to see his twisted saint's essential sanity, and in so doing to question our own' - Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder and Waves Passing in the Night `I burned through this haunting tale in one rapt sitting. Deeply compelling' * Publisher's Weekly * 'As ever, Michael Finkel's voice in this fresh new chronicle is clean, clear, lucid - his attention fair and compassionate.

My latest one is a man called Christopher Knight - a silent idol for anyone who has felt the urge to just sack it all off and live the life of a hermit' - Lucy Mangan * Stylist * 'An extraordinary story about solitude, community, identity and freedom' * Guardian * ' fascinating account of Knight's renunciation of humanity. It is also, unexpectedly, a tribute to the joys of reading' * The Wall Street Journal * 'Not all heroes wear capes. 'A meditation on solitude, wildness and survival.

The stranger in the woods michael finkel 2017