Ghost Species: James Bradley in conversation with Sophie Cunningham by Byron Writers Festival

James Bradley’s new novel Ghost Species is a beautiful and deeply affecting exploration of connection and loss in an age of planetary trauma. Set against the backdrop of hastening climate catastrophe, a group of scientists are working to re-engineer the climate by resurrecting extinct species. The protagonist Kate becomes enmeshed in another, more clandestine program to recreate our long-lost relatives, the Neanderthals. But when the first of the children, a girl called Eve, is born, Kate finds herself torn between her growing love for Eve and her obligations to the project, and makes a decision that will alter her and Eve’s lives forever.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, James speaks with Sophie Cunningham about the writing process and his hopes for the book. James delves into some of the central questions of Ghost Species: deep time, ethics and what it means to be human. They discuss grief in both a personal and global context, from climate grief, to pandemic grief and the very personal grief of losing a parent.