Nomadland: Surviving in 21st-Century America

In an America that seems dystopian, but is real and contemporary, journalist Jessica Bruder, in the finest tradition of immersive journalism, lived for three years and travelled twenty-five thousand kilometres in nomadic camps, accompanying precarious workers who, having no other means of subsistence, gave up traditional homes to live in trailers and vans that carry them from coast to coast and from Mexico to the Canadian border, in the obsessive pursuit of a pittance of a wage.

Bruder, in a style that subtly oscillates between journalistic rigour and literary emotion, painfully twists the traditional concepts of community and family and immortalises a journey through the soul of twenty-first-century America.

These are the moving, and fearless, stories of former teachers, managers, waiters, and anyone else you might imagine, all in search of an American dream they had and lost without realising where or how.

Nomadland was the inspiration for Chloe Zhao's film, which won the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress (Frances McDormand).