Kings of the Yukon

An Alaskan River Journey

By: Adam Weymouth

Narrated by: Charlie Anson

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Kings of the Yukon by Andy Weymouth, read by Charlie Anson.

The Yukon river is over 2,000 miles long, flowing northwest from Canada through the Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of King salmon migrate the distance of this river to their spawning grounds, where they breed and die, in what is the longest salmon run in the world. For the communities that live along the Yukon, the fish have long been the lifeblood of the economy and local culture. But with the effects of climate change and a globalized economy, the health and numbers of the King salmon are in question, as is the fate of the communities that depend on them.

Travelling in a canoe along the Yukon as the salmon migrate, a four-month journey through untrammeled wilderness, Adam Weymouth traces the profound interconnectedness of the people and the fish through searing portraits of the individuals he encounters. He offers a powerful, nuanced glimpse into the erosion of indigenous culture, and into our ever-complicated relationship with the natural world. Weaving in the history of the salmon run and their mysterious life cycle, Kings of the Yukon is extraordinary adventure and nature writing at its most compelling.

2019, Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book of the Year, Winner

2018, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Winner

©2018 Adam Weymouth (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Weymouth combines acute political, personal and ecological understanding, with the most beautiful writing reminiscent of a young Robert Macfarlane . . . He is, I have no doubt, a significant voice for the future . . . a really outstanding new contemporary British voice . . . I've never seen such a strong and excited consensus among the judges for a winner. (Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times literary editor and judge of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2018)

Lyrical ... The elegiac tone that fills Kings of the Yukon, the sorrow at the loss of culture and nature in the wilderness, is an unavoidable reflection of life in the 21st century (Richard Lea)

A rich and fascinating book ... So vivid it reads like a thriller ... I was hooked (Elisa Segrave)

[Weymouth's] account ... is so assured, so accomplished, that I found it hard to believe it was his first book ... rich in characters, and beautifully written. (Michael Kerr, 'The best Christmas books for travellers')

An epic ... Eloquent and tautly written (Tom Fort)

I was knocked sideways by this book and quite unexpectedly. Adam Weymouth takes his place beside the great travel writers like Chatwin, Thubron, Leigh Fermor, in one bound. But like their books this is about so much more than just travel. (Susan Hill)

[A] brilliant account of a summer spent paddling the 2,000-mile length of the Yukon River... Kings of the Yukon succeeds as an adventure tale, a natural history and a work of art. Its various threads of context and back story are woven seamlessly into the daily panorama of the river journey (Richard Adams Carey)

Dazzling, often in unexpected ways, Adam Weymouth is a wonderful travel writer, nature writer, adventure writer - along the way, he is also a nuanced examiner of some of the world's most fraught and urgent questions about the interconnectedness of people and the natural world. (Kamila Shamsie, author of 'Home Fire')

This is the best kind of travel writing. Weymouth embarks on an ambitious journey - 2,000 miles down the Yukon in a canoe - voyaging, listening and learning. An outstanding book (Rob Penn)

An enthralling account of a literary and scientific quest. Adam Weymouth vividly conveys the raw grandeur and deep silences of the Yukon landscape, and endows his subject, the river's King Salmon, with a melancholy nobility (Luke Jennings)