#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Ghost Cities to Shelter

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own #6Degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on X using the hashtag #6Degrees.

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This month’s starting book is Ghost Cities by Siang Lu, winner of The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025, a literary prize awarded annually to “a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases”. As is often the case, it’s a book I haven’t read. Links from each title will take you to my review .

The blurb states Ghost Cities is inspired by ‘the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China’. This provided me with inspiration for my first link – Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn, a nonfiction book also about abandoned places – ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim them.

Continuing the theme of abandoned places, historical novel The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford is set on the remote Scottish island group of St. Kilda whose few remaining inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland in 1930 when life there became untenable.

Clear by Carys Davies is also set on a remote Scottish island now inhabited by one man, its last remaining occupant. The landowner wants to evict him in order to turn the island into grazing land for sheep.

The need to abandon your homeland also features in Exit West by Mohsin Hamid which tells the story of two young people forced to flee the war-torn city in which they live and seek safety in another country.

From west I’m heading north to North Woods by Daniel Mason. Set around a single house deep in the woods of New England, the book relates the stories of the various people who have occupied and then abandoned the house over the centuries.

Shelter by Sarah Franklin is also set in a forest, the Forest of Dean in WW2. Connie has joined the Women’s Timber Corps to escape bombed out of Coventry whilst Seppe has found a degree of safety even though confined in a Prisoner of War camp.

My chain has taken me from abandoned cities to a place of refuge. Where did your chain take you?