This book has achieved the unique distinction of winning both the Authors Club award for first best novel - one of the UK's major fiction prizes - and the BP Natural World Book Prize, Britain's top award for enviromental literature and a prize that had previously always gone to non - fiction work. The story explores the great enviromental issues facing 21st century man, including, ultimately, the issue of his own survival, by following in microscopic close-up what happens when a group of human beings leading everyday lives, inadvertantly begins to stress the wild creatures living around them. 'Devastatingly effective … ought to be required reading.'The Times' Magically wrought … a parable for our times.'The Sunday Times' The most significant book of its kind I have read since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.' David Arnold Forster, Chief Executive, English Nature