Zeitgeisters

CASPER HENDERSON

Writer & Researcher

Caspar Henderson cut his teeth as an environmental journalist working first on the BBC Radio 4 flagship programme Costing the Earth, and then as a senior editor at openDemocracy. But it’s as a writer of rich and wonderful books that he’s really made his name. There are few writers that patrol the uncertain lands that link speculative science, philosophy, psychology, fiction, and poetry with as much verve and grace. He is polymathic in the best sense, using one system of knowledge to illuminate another. If the word existed in French, Casper Henderson would be the guild master of juxtapositeurs (it doesn’t hélas).

Where to Start

There are three books: The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary (2012), A New Map of Wonders: A Journey in Search of Modern Marvels (2017), and The Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous (2023). I very rarely say ‘read everything’ by any writer but make an exception with Henderson.

His work is, in a quite literal sense, wonderful and, for that reason, I recommend you start at the beginning, with his The Book of Barely Imagined Beings.

It is a catalogue of 27 living creatures, from axolotls to zebrafish, which he calls “a bestiary for the Anthropocene, in which all the animals are real, evolving, and in many cases threatened with imminent extinction”.