WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN
Arcadia, October 2025
This novel is vivid. It has a great eye for canines, a great ear for human speech, and a great heart for the world, including the future world we are making. Add to that the dark but ever-fascinating Matter of Chernobyl, and the result is tremendous, unforgettable.
― Kim Stanley Robinson, author of THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE
Activist Lucy’s earliest memories are of living with her grandparents during the 2020 pandemic and discovering her grandmother’s love of birds. Filmmaker Hester was born on the day of the Chornobyl explosion and visits the site years later to film its feral dogs in the Exclusion Zone. Here she meets Lux, the wolf dog who will give her life meaning.
Over half a century, their journeys take them from London to the Highlands to Somerset, through protests, family rifts, and personal tragedy. Lucy joins the fight to restore Britain’s depleted natural habitats and revive the species who once shared the island, whilst Hester strives to give a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves.
Both dream of a time when there are wolves again.
Praise for WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN
Confirming E. J. Swift’s standing as a writer of urgent, beautifully crafted eco-fiction, her latest novel is haunted by the legacy of Chornobyl. When There Are Wolves Again suggests a new beauty might lie within our reach if we commit, as do Swift’s characters, to rewilding, species reintroduction, activism of one sort or another, and a dutiful stewardship of the land. I’m left with a much-needed feeling of optimism.
― Anne Charnock, author of DREAMS BEFORE THE START OF TIME
When There Are Wolves Again is an extraordinary novel, compassionate, urgent, and beautifully written, both intimate and sweeping in its depiction of our natural world and the two women who fight to save it. It has perfectly merged literary and speculative fiction into an instant classic.
― Lavie Tidhar, author of MAROR
When There Are Wolves Again is gentle and inspiring eco-fiction. Full of charm and intimate detail, with exquisitely written relationships, both human and lupine. You’ll never look at rewilding the same way. This is a book full of hope, sorely needed in a world that seems to lack it.
― Tade Thompson, author of ROSEWATER
Written with deep care and fierce hope, When There Are Wolves Again offers thoughtful answers to urgent questions about our future. It’s a joy to read – effortlessly controlled and textured, moving in its details yet bold in scope – and a brilliant example of what can be done with the tools of speculative fiction.
― Matt Hill, author of LAMB
WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN is another of E. J. Swift’s beautifully written, moving and eloquent letters to the natural world, and to the power of humanity to address the damage we inflict upon it. The Chernobyl disaster, extrapolated into a vividly realised near future world, brings two unforgettable characters into a narrative of exploration, reparation and hope. Swift gets better and better.
― Adam Roberts, author of LAKE OF DARKNESS
When There Are Wolves Again is by turns tragic, terrifying, uplifting, poetic, vast in its ambition and devastatingly human in its scale. It carries you along in an almost dream-like state through the best and the worst of the humanity in an age of crisis, imagining a future both heartbreaking and in the end, full of urgent, soaring hope.
― Claire North, author of THE LAST SONG OF PENELOPE
Reviews of WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN
An eco-masterpiece . . . a story by turns tragic, alarming, uplifting, poetic and ultimately hopeful. Swift’s accomplished prose and vivid characterisation connect large questions of the planet’s destiny with human intimacy and experience
― The Guardian (A Best Science FIction Book of 2025)
Wonderful . . . this is what science fiction should be doing now . . . a novel that tackles head-on the hard problem of writing about the near future; it does so with clarity, creativity, an eye for detail, and unfailing empathy ― Locus
A remarkable work. Beautifully written and sensitively observed, it demonstrates how great speculative fiction can speak to our present and prepare us for the future. Swift has written a powerful and necessary novel, one that beautifully captures the precarity of our current times whilst anticipating and preparing us for the struggles that will inevitably come ahead. It confirms Swift as one of modern speculative fiction’s key visionaries, and as one of our most engagingly human writers.
― Fantasy Hive
Swift’s exquisite writing brings life to everything from soil to sky…It’s a novel to make you touch grass, and dream of wolves ― SFX, (five stars)
The most important, the most courageous, the most uplifting novel I have read in years…one of the UK’s brightest younger talents in speculative fiction
― Strange Horizons
One of our best writers. Her new novel more than lives up to the expectations generated by its predecessor [The Coral Bones] ― ParSec Magazine
The use of nature is lyrically described, the power of science to explain the danger and aid us to do better is carefully explained but the human element is where this story excels, to tell us that we as a collective group can do better and this is what it could potentially look like. Coming back to that feeling of uncertainty it’s a word that also doesn’t mean all is lost there is . . . this is excellent science fiction for the twenty first century because this gives us that feeling of possibility – hope. I think When There Are Wolves Again is going to be a book hard to beat for my favourite of the year. Incredibly strongly recommended! ― Runalong The Shelves
Poetic, passionate and incredibly thoughtful . . . Swift’s insights are considered, plausible, and in the end affirmatory. Her writing, tied indivisibly as it is to her personal convictions, goes from strength to strength ― Nina Allan
Powerful, emotive stuff, and [this novel] has touched me far more deeply than I would ever have expected ― Reader Of Else
Purchase links: When There Are Wolves Again
THE CORAL BONES
Arcadia, January 2024. Previously published by Unsung Stories, September 2022
‘A thoughtful, immersive, very human story that speaks to current fears and hopes for our world’ – The Guardian
This is what it looks like when coral dies.
Present day. Marine biologist Hana Ishikawa is racing against time to save the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, but struggles to fight for a future in a world where so much has already been lost.
1839. Seventeen-year-old Judith Holliman escapes the monotony of Sydney Town when her naval captain father lets her accompany him on a voyage, unaware of the wonders and dangers she will soon encounter.
The sun-scorched 22nd century. Telma Velasco is hunting for a miracle: a leafy seadragon, long believed extinct, has been sighted. But as Telma investigates, she finds hope in unexpected places.
Three women: divided by time, connected by the ocean. Past, present and future collide in E. J. Swift’s The Coral Bones, a powerful elegy to a disappearing world – and a vision of a more hopeful future.
Order The Coral Bones
Amazon (UK) // Amazon (US) // Waterstones // Forbidden Planet // Bookshop
PARIS ADRIFT
Solaris, February 2018
‘An effervescent blend of revisionist history, fantasy and science fiction.’ — Washington Post
Paris was supposed to save Hallie. Now… well, let’s just say Paris has other ideas.
There’s a strange woman called the chronometrist who will not leave her alone. Garbled warnings from bizarre creatures keep her up at night. And there’s a time portal in the keg room of the bar where she works.
Soon Hallie is tumbling through the turbulent past and future Paris, making friends, changing the world – and falling in love.
But with every trip, Hallie loses a little of herself, and every infinitesimal change she makes ripples through time, until the future she’s trying to save suddenly looks nothing like what she hoped for…
Order Paris Adrift
Amazon (UK) // Amazon (US) // Waterstones // Bookshop
THE OSIRIS PROJECT
The Osiris Project – OSIRIS, CATAVEIRO and TAMARUQ – is a speculative fiction trilogy which is set in a world radically altered by climate change, from an isolated oceanic city in the grip of a conspiracy, to the sands of the Amazon Desert and the fate of the last jaguar.
OSIRIS: Book One of The Osiris Project
(Del Rey UK / JABberwocky)
‘A fantastic blend of worldbuilding, excellent storytelling and complex characters.’
— SF Signal
‘An absolute gem’ – Interzone
Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her…
Adelaide Rechnov, wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.
Vikram Bai lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the brutal winter coming promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.
Brought together by circumstance and fate, these two very different people attempt to bridge the divide lurking at the heart of Osiris, but who is using whom, and what secrets will they uncover?
Order OSIRIS:
Amazon UK // Amazon US // Kobo
CATAVEIRO: Book Two of The Osiris Project
(Del Rey UK / JABberwocky)
“Swift has produced another beautifully-written novel.” — Civilian Reader
“Cataveiro has a soulful, lonely quality as Taeo and Ramona embark on their missions, haunted by memories of the past and visions of what lies ahead … an intriguing world to get lost in.” — SciFiNow
For political exile Taeo Ybanez, this could be his ticket home. Relations between the Antarcticans and the Patagonians are worse than ever, and to be caught on the wrong side could prove deadly.
For pilot and cartographer Ramona Callejas, the presence of the mysterious stranger is one more thing in the way of her saving her mother from a deadly disease.
All roads lead to Cataveiro, the city of fate and fortune, where their destinies will become intertwined and their futures cemented for ever…
Order CATAVEIRO:
Amazon UK // Amazon US // Kobo // iTunes // Nook
TAMARUQ: Book Three of the Osiris Project
(Del Rey UK / JABberwocky)
‘Tamaruq really is a revelation’ — SciFiNow
‘A really immersive series’ — SF Crowsnest
Fleeing from her family and the elitist oppression of the Osiris government, Adelaide Rechnov has become the thing she once feared, a revolutionary.
But with the discovery of a radio signal comes the stark realization that there is life outside their small island existence. Adelaide’s worries are about to become much bigger.
Meanwhile, as rumour spreads on the mainland, many head to the lost city of Osiris with their own devious objectives. But in a world where war is king and only the most powerful survive, there can only be one victor…
The thrilling, epic finale to The Osiris Project.
Order TAMARUQ:
E. J. Swift 