An evocative voyage through the Carpathian mountain range and its threatened landscape peoples
and history The Carpathian Mountains of Poland Slovakia Romania and Ukraine are
Europe’s last true wilderness. A landscape of great spruce and beech forests grass meadows
and ancient villages its people contend daily with the elements—as well as Europe’s last large
carnivores. But this fragile ecosystem is now under threat from climate change and illegal
logging. Journeying from the banks of the Danube to Transylvania Nick Thorpe guides us
through the history and ecology of the watershed of Europe between the Black Sea and the
Baltic. For a thousand years the Carpathians have been a place of refuge of identity and
belonging where powerful rulers and dynasties fought to gain control over rich gold seams and
the unruly inhabitants of strategic valleys. Today its inhabitants struggle to protect its
vast forest habitat from urban sprawl as well as logging. Drawing on interviews with
shepherds foresters and loggers and his four decades of experience in the region Thorpe
sheds light on a neglected part of Europe—where bears wolves chamois and lynxes still roam.
