We Are All From Somewhere Else

*First published as The Mara Crossing, now with new and updated material*

''A prodigy, a book of wonders. Wonder, pity and terror, the searing section of voices in transit coercing compassion - and beyond that, empathy'' Independent

Home is where you start from, but where is a swallow''s real home? And what does ''native'' mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain?

In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration - from the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts to Geese battle raging winds over Mount Everest, lemurs skim precipices in Madagascar and wildebeest, at the climax of their epic trek from Tanzania, braving a river filled with the largest crocodiles in Africa.

Human migration has shaped civilisation but today is one of the greatest challenges the world