When flying to a book launch might, just, be justified

A book about the Bishnois meets the world

I’ve come from the ash-particled sky of Los Angeles to the cold of London, but not SO cold: the soil of the garden is not frozen but moist and crumbly. The second named storm of this brief stay is howling outside. Climate change waves more and more red flags and should have put all peoples and governments and corporations of the world on red alert. And of course it hasn’t. We humans are incredibly brilliant and fiercely blinkered.

I’ve maximized my carbon footprint (well not quite, I’m flying economy) to help promote a book about living sustainably. It’s the same dilemma that brought this book into being. Back in 2020 I flew to India to present my book about eco-lawyers saving the planet, Client Earth, at the Jaipur Literary Festival. To offset the carbon miles of those flights I set out to look for another project, and came upon the Bishnois. Dating back to the teachings of their 15^th century guru, they are the world leaders in nature conservancy.

Five years later, at their request, my book about this remarkable community gives the rest of the world the chance to learn about them.

Publication is in stages: in the UK and India January 23^rd, and North America on April 8^th. This is my fourteenth book I think, and I’m well used to publication days gliding by without a whisper. I came to London just in case one of the big radio shows called me in: apart from Radio Ulster, they didn’t. Still, a launch event at the travel bookstore Stanfords gave the book a really happy evening in London. The crowd was warm and engaged, and my presentation had the flow I was hoping for.

Tomorrow morning I help spew out more carbon with the first of three flights to take me back to Jaipur. That city’s is the largest literary festival in the world. I’ve invited a Bishnoi who was integral to the project, the teacher Narendra Bishnoi, to share the stage of my festival event with me (February 1^st). The visit completes the book, in that I’m delivering it back to the people whose stories it contains.

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Unless the writer is a star name, heading to a festival nowadays means paying your own way. LA to London to Jaipur and back to LA via Hong Kong doesn’t come cheap even in coach, but then my writing has never had a commercial trajectory. Photos have turned My Head for a Tree into a gorgeous-looking book, and even at the kind discounts given by Franck Vogel the fees for photos are taken from author royalties. Years of work will likely see me coming out of this project at a financial loss. But coming to know the Bishnois has enriched me enormously. Now readers have the chance to be similarly affected.

For a sample from the book, please take a look at this piece, from Scroll: A conservationist studies lessons on sustainability from the 600-year-old Bishnoi community