No Straight Road Takes You There

Essays for Uneven Terrain

Rebecca Solnit

$36.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Granta
05 August 2025

Literature, Poetry & Criticism; Literary essays; Environmentalist thought & ideology

This book's title, No Straight Road Takes You There, is an evocation and a declaration. Highways tend to be built across the easy routes and flat places, or the landscape is cleared away - logged, graded, levelled, tunnelled through - but to stick to these roads is to miss what else is out there. In her writing and activism, Rebecca Solnit has sought the pathless places in order to celebrate indirect and unpredictable consequences, and to embrace slowness and imperfection, which, she argues, are key to understanding the possibilities of change.

In her latest essay collection, the award-winning writer explores responses to the climate crisis, as well as reflections on women's rights, the fight for democracy, the trends in masculinity, and the rise of the far right in the West. Incantatory and poetic, positive and engaging, these essays argue for the long-term view and the power of collective action, making a case for seeding change wherever possible, and offering us all a path out of the wilderness.

By: Rebecca Solnit
Imprint: Granta
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9781803511641
ISBN 10: 1803511648
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 05 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of more than twenty books, including Orwell's Roses, Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the 2021 James Tait Black Award, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis. She lives in San Francisco and writes regularly for the Guardian. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews for No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain

A book of fierce and poetic thinking - and a guide for navigating a rapidly changing, non-linear, living world -- Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life With her deep sense of the movement of history, her agile intellect, hope in the possibilities of action and nimble prose, Solnit continues to surprise and delight. This new collection of essays is a tonic in dark times -- Lisa Appignanesi