Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk)

Join Helen Macdonald — author of the prize-winning H Is for Hawk — for a free evening in Basel, hosted by Book Club Basel, the Oxford and Cambridge Alumni Society of Basel, and the Harvard Club of Switzerland.

Doors open at 6:30

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Join us for an evening with Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk — winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book of the Year, and now a feature film starring Claire Foy.

An event by Book Club Basel, the Oxford and Cambridge Alumni Society of Basel, and the Harvard Club of Switzerland, with the support of the Swisslos Fund Basel-Stadt.

One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year, and one of Slate's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years. A Best Book of the Year: TIME, NPR, O The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Star Tribune, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, and Book Riot.

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer — captivated by hawks since childhood — she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own. Resolving to raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life.

Heart-wrenching and humorous, H is for Hawk is an unflinching account of bereavement and a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, with a parallel examination of a legendary writer's eccentric falconry. Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.