{"product_id":"our-house-is-on-fire-isbn-9780143133575","title":"Our House Is on Fire","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"A must-read ecological message of hope . . . Everyone with an interest in the future of this planet should read this book.\" --David Mitchell, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen climate activist Greta Thunberg was eleven, her parents Malena and Svante, and her little sister Beata, were facing a crisis in their own home. Greta had stopped eating and speaking, and her mother and father had reconfigured their lives to care for her. Desperate and searching for answers, her parents discovered what was at the heart of Greta’s distress: her imperiled future on a rapidly heating planet. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Steered by Greta’s determination to understand the truth and generate change, they began to see the deep connections between their own suffering and the planet’s. Written by a remarkable family and told through the voice of an iconoclastic mother, \u003ci\u003eOur House Is on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of how they fought their problems at home by taking global action. And it is the story of how Greta decided to go on strike from school, igniting a worldwide rebellion.\"[\u003ci\u003eOur House Is on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e] feels like a new form of nonfiction, intimate and approachable as a photo album: a family memoir. . . . This is also a remarkable story of togetherness: a modern family shifting and pivoting to keep each person afloat.\" \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An urgent, lucid, courageous account. . . . [E]veryone with an interest in the future of the planet should read this book. It is a clear-headed diagnosis. It is a glimpse of a saner world. It is fertile with hope.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An extraordinary account of how one family rose, with unshakable moral clarity, to the tremendous responsibility of being alive at the moment when our immediate collective decisions will determine the fate of life on Earth. They share their story of courage not because they want our accolades, but because they demand our company. Greta Thunberg has already inspired a global moment--this book is part of how we will win.\" \u003cb\u003e—Naomi Klein\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A surprisingly funny and optimistic book. Thunberg and her family might be screaming ‘FIRE’ on a crowded planet. But they believe we have the power to put that fire out if we act, right here, right now.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e (UK)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A book about finding purpose as a route to recovery.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e (UK)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This blazingly candid family memoir reveals the grueling and bewildering struggles that propelled Greta onto the world stage. . . . An unnerving and profoundly enlightening chronicle of the symbiosis between human and planetary health as manifest within one remarkable family whose painful awakening to our ‘acute sustainability crisis’ should embolden us all.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An impassioned call to action and a vulnerable family portrait of neurodiversity.” \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eGreta Thunberg is a climate crisis activist from Sweden. In August 2018, she decided not to go to school one day, starting a strike outside the Swedish Parliament. Her actions sparked a global movement to fight the climate crisis, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet. Greta has Asperger's and considers it a gift which has enabled her to see the climate crisis in \"black and white.\" She has won the prestigious Prix Liberté, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and was selected as \u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e's Person of the Year in 2019. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller \u003ci\u003eNo One Is Too Small to Make a Difference\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTogether with her mother, the celebrated opera singer Malena Ernman, her sister, Beata Ernman, and her father, Svante Thunberg, she has dedicated her life to protecting the living planet.Preface \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis could have been my story. An autobiography of sorts, had I been so inclined.\u003cbr\u003e But autobiographies don’t really interest me. There are other more important things.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This story was written by Svante and me together with our daughters, and it’s about the crisis that struck our family.\u003cbr\u003e It’s about Greta and Beata.\u003cbr\u003e But above all it’s about the crisis that surrounds and affects us all. The one we humans have created through our way of life: beyond sustainability, divorced from nature, to which we all belong. Some call it over-consumption, others call it a climate crisis.\u003cbr\u003e The vast majority seem to think that this crisis is happening somewhere far away from here, and that it won’t affect us for a very long time yet.\u003cbr\u003e But that’s not true.\u003cbr\u003e Because it’s already here and it’s happening around us all the time, in so many different ways. At the breakfast table, in school corridors, along streets, in houses and apartments. In the trees outside your window, in the wind that ruffles your hair.\u003cbr\u003e Perhaps some of the things that Svante and I, along with the children, decided to share here, after considerable delibera- tion, should have been saved for later.\u003cbr\u003e Once we had more distance. Not for our sake, but for yours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo doubt this would have been perceived as more accept- able. A bit more agreeable.\u003cbr\u003e But we don’t have that kind of time. To have a fighting chance, we have to put this crisis in the spotlight right now.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A few days before this book was first published in Sweden in August 2018, our daughter Greta Thunberg sat down outside the Swedish Parliament and began a school strike for the climate – a strike that is still going on today, on Mynttorget in the Old Town in Stockholm, and in many places around the world.\u003cbr\u003e Since then a lot has changed. Both for her and for us as a family.\u003cbr\u003e Some days it’s almost like a fairy tale. A saga. But that’s a story for another book.\u003cbr\u003e This story is about the road to Greta’s school strike. The road to 20 August 2018.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Malena Ernman, November 2018\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e P.S. Before this book was published we announced that any money we might earn from it would go to Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and other non-profit organizations, through a foundation we’ve set up.\u003cbr\u003e And that’s how it is.\u003cbr\u003e Because that’s what Greta and Beata have decided.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBehind the Curtain\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eElegy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For the day wears on. The sun will die at seven.\u003cbr\u003e Speak up, experts on darkness, who will brighten us now?\u003cbr\u003e Who turns on a Western backlight, who dreams an Eastern dream? Someone, anyone, bring a lantern!\u003cbr\u003e Preferably you.\u003cbr\u003e – Werner Aspenström\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eScene 1.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eOne Last Night at the Opera\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It’s places, everyone.\u003cbr\u003e The orchestra tune their instruments one last time and the lights go down in the hall. I’m standing next to the conductor, Jean-Christophe Spinosi, we’re just about to walk through the stage door and take our positions.\u003cbr\u003e Everyone is happy tonight. It’s the final performance, and tomorrow we all get to go home to our loved ones. Or on to the next job. Home to France, Italy and Spain. Home to Oslo and Copenhagen. On to Berlin, London and New York.\u003cbr\u003e The last few performances have felt like being in a trance. Anyone who has ever worked on stage knows what I mean.\u003cbr\u003e Sometimes there is a kind of flow, an energy that builds in the interaction between stage and audience and sets off a chain reaction that unfolds from performance to performance, from night to night. It’s like magic. Theatre and opera magic.\u003cbr\u003e And now we’re at the final performance of Handel’s \u003ci\u003eXerxes \u003c\/i\u003eat the Artipelag arts centre in the Stockholm archipelago. It is 2 November 2014, and on this evening I will sing my last opera in Sweden. But no one is aware of that. Including me.\u003cbr\u003e This evening I will sing my last opera ever.\u003cbr\u003e The atmosphere is electric, and everyone backstage is walk- ing on air, a few centimetres above Artipelag’s brand new concrete floor.\u003cbr\u003e They are filming as well. Eight cameras and a full-scale production team are recording the performance.\u003cbr\u003e Through the stage door you can hear the sound of 900 silent people. The King and Queen are in attendance. Everyone is there. I’m pacing back and forth. I’m trying to breathe, but I can’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy body seems to want to twist to the left and I’m sweating. My hands are falling asleep. The last seven weeks have been one long nightmare. Nowhere is there the slightest bit of calm. I feel sick, yet beyond nausea. Like a drawn-out panic attack.\u003cbr\u003e As if I had slammed right into a glass wall and got stuck mid-air as I was falling to the ground. I’m waiting for the thud. Waiting for the pain. I’m waiting for blood, broken bones and the wail of ambulances.\u003cbr\u003e But nothing happens. All I see is myself suspended in the air in front of that bloody glass wall, which just stands there with- out the slightest crack.\u003cbr\u003e ‘I’m not feeling well,’ I say.\u003cbr\u003e ‘Sit down. Do you want some water?’ We’re speaking French, the conductor and I.\u003cbr\u003e Suddenly my legs give out. Jean-Christophe catches me in his arms.\u003cbr\u003e ‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll delay the performance. They can wait. We’ll blame it on me, I’m French. We’re always late.’\u003cbr\u003e Someone laughs.\u003cbr\u003e I really have to hurry home after the performance. My younger daughter, Beata, is turning nine tomorrow and I have a thousand things to take care of. But now I am where I am. Unconscious, in the arms of the conductor.\u003cbr\u003e Typical.\u003cbr\u003e Someone caresses my forehead. Cut to black.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eScene 2.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Ironworks\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I grew up in a terrace house in the small, northern town of Sandviken, Sweden. Mum was a deacon and Dad worked as an accountant at the Sandvik ironworks. I have a sister, Vendela, three years my junior, and a brother, Karl-Johan. Mum named him after the Swedish baritone Carl-Johan ‘Loa’ Falkman because she thought Loa was so handsome.\u003cbr\u003e This was the extent of the connection to opera and classical music I had at home.\u003cbr\u003e We did like to sing though. We sang a lot. Folk music, ABBA, John Denver. All in all we were just another small- town Swedish family. The only thing that might have set us apart was my parents’ involvement with vulnerable people.\u003cbr\u003e In our little home on Ekostigen, on the outskirts of the Vallhov neighbourhood, humanitarianism reigned – if some- one needed help it was our duty to try to offer that help to them. My mother carried on this family tradition from her father, Ebbe Arvidsson, who was a high-up official in the Church of Sweden and a pioneer in ecumenism and modern aid work. So in my younger years I often found myself living under the same roof as refugees and undocumented immigrants.\u003cbr\u003e It could be a bit chaotic at times. But it worked out fine.\u003cbr\u003e Whenever we travelled somewhere it was always to visit my mother’s best friend, who was a nun; we spent several summers at her convent in the north of England. This is prob- ably why I swear so much on stage. The habit must stem from\u003cbr\u003e a sort of chronic childhood tendency towards rebellion, which I don’t think I’ll ever quite shake.\u003cbr\u003e But apart from the fact that we spent our summers in the dormitories of English convents and that we had refugees liv- ing in the garage, we were just like everyone else.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As I said, we sang, and I loved to sing. I sang all the time.\u003cbr\u003e I sang everything and anything – the harder the piece, the more fun it was.\u003cbr\u003e Much later, when I chose to become an opera singer, it was probably for the simple fact that I love a challenge. After all, nothing was harder or more fun than singing opera.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302406934757,"sku":"NP9780143133575","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143133575.jpg?v=1767734325","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/our-house-is-on-fire-isbn-9780143133575","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}