Hello, Stranger

Hello, Stranger: Stories of Connections in a Divided World was published by Granta in 2021, when it was BBC Radio4 Book of the Week. It came out in paperback in 2022.

Reviews

Humane and heart-warming

— Bookseller Editor’s Choice

An elegant and moving exploration of what it means to connect with strangers turns into an elegy for a much-missed way of life… while Hello, Stranger is a beautiful meditation on the pleasures and pains of a world to which many of us yearn to return, it may also be an elegy for a world that is lost to us for some time to come.

— The Guardian

Will Buckingham has written a moving memoir of finding solace, after the death of his life partner, in travelling and talking in lands such as Myanmar that are culturally distant from his native England.

— The Economist

A wonderful mix of history, anthropology and psychology

— The Herald

A treasure trove of all the possibilities strangers can be to each other. Read, learn and savour.

— Madeleine Bunting, author of Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care

A glorious book, fabulously learned and funny, and filled with all manner of stirring stories.

— Philip Marsden, author of The Summer Isles

Buckingham provides a map for others to follow, showing that when we show kindness to strangers, we may be entertaining angels unawares

— John Paul Flintoff, author of How to Change the World (School of Life)

Hello, Stranger links a personal story with a wider consideration of how humans and other primates make connection beyond their home communities. It explores loneliness and loss, and why welcome matters… I was gripped.

— The Friend