Manda talks to Chris Johnstone about her new book and Sustainable Happiness

Writing a novel from the perspective of someone who dies at the end of the first chapter (truly, this isn’t a spoiler) was always going to be…interesting. But it was part of the vision from the hill and if I’ve learned anything in forty years of shamanic practice, it’s that not all visions come in clear text, and when they do, messing with them in any way is a seriously bad idea.

I genuinely believed I’d stopped writing novels. I’d become a podcaster instead, a smallholder, a holder-of-courses where people could learn in real time the things that might yet still turn us away from the multi-polar cliff edge to which our dysfunctional culture is hurtling us with such terrifying speed. But…