A01=Ben Masters
amy liptrot
Author_Ben Masters
Category=DNC
Category=VFJX
Category=WNCN
charlie gilmore book
enchantment
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_health-lifestyle
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fathers
h is for hawk
katherine may
nabokov
nature cure
raynor winn
robert macfarlane
the outrun
the salt path
Product details
- ISBN 9781783789733
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 10 Apr 2025
- Publisher: Granta Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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When Ben Masters' father, a dedicated naturalist, is confined to the house with inoperable cancer, he is unable to follow the butterfly season for the first time since his childhood. His son must become his connection to the outdoors, reporting back on his beloved Purple Emperors, Lulworth Skippers, Wood Whites and Silver-studded Blues. The problem is, his son knows practically nothing about the natural world.
Blending natural history, pop culture, and literary biography, this unforgettable memoir charts a terminal summer when butterflies become a way for father and son to talk about masculinity, memory, identity, generational differences, and, ultimately, loss and continuation.
The Flitting takes readers on an unlikely journey, flitting between the lives and works of Vladimir Nabokov and other literary lepidopterists; the artistic metamorphoses of Prince and Joni Mitchell; butterflies and gender in Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter and The Sopranos; the voices of John Clare and Luther Vandross. These diverse subjects come together in an intensely authentic portrait of a father and son sharing passions, lessons and regrets as they run out of time.
BEN MASTERS is a writer and an academic. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the Literary Review.
