The New Wilderness
2020 novel by Diane Cook
The New Wilderness is a 2020 speculative climate fiction novel by American writer Diane Cook. The novel takes place in a future where climate change and pollution have devastated the environment. A mother and daughter leave the City by taking a part in a study that will reintroduce humans to the last area of protected land in the world.
Background
Cook developed the idea for the novel while writing her 2014 short story collection Man v. Nature.
Reception
The book received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly. Téa Obreht in a review for The Guardian called it "a fast-paced, thrilling story to ask stomach-turning questions in a moment when it would benefit every soul to have their stomach turned by the prospect of the future she envisions. John Maxwell Hamilton, writing for Callaway Climate Insights, praised the book's prose and exploration of climate change. Lamorna Ash of the Times Literary Supplement also praised it.
Jonah Raskin, writing for The New York Journal of Books, offered a mixed review.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The New Wilderness” is 2020 novel by Diane Cook. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wilderness, novel and Diane, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2020 novel by Diane Cook” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q114761903. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 2014.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The New Wilderness”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The New Wilderness primary sources, The New Wilderness archive and Wilderness research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The New Wilderness”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The New Wilderness” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.