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Sophy Roberts

@sophy_roberts

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Journalist & bestselling author. ‘A Training School for Elephants’ (2025). ‘The Lost Pianos of Siberia’ (2020). Writing for @ft_weekend @wsj & more.

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A few last seats left at this very table - on a non-fiction travel writing and film photography retreat in the Himalayas, from October 21 to 31st 2026. The dates deliberately coincide with a special Buddhist festival few outsiders get to witness. Co-tutored by @sophy_roberts and @michaelturek. Logistics by @beyulex. See www.sophyroberts.com for more. Or link in IG bio.

📸 @sophy_roberts taken in Himalayas Nepal by @sophy_roberts

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4 months ago

Over on my IG Stories, some behind-the-scenes images of travels in Angola’s @parquenacionaldoiona @africanparksnetwork with @cooksonadventures. This is not an easy place to navigate — a destination on the rise, but one that isn’t without profound challenges. Those nuances aren’t well suited to reductive social media captions, so instead I’ll give you a sense of how staggeringly compelling its’ potential: the people, the landscape, the wildlife, who need this new chapter in Angola’s story to work. taken in Parque National Do iona by @sophy_roberts

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2 days ago

Halfway down the coastline of @parquenacionaldoiona in southwest #Angola there’s an abandoned fishing island — once home to 1,000 people, but since 1974, a ghost town. It’s tucked between the mainland’s 100m-high dunes which fall directly into the sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, where blooming clouds of sardines move along the Benguela current. Unless you’re in the business of chartering a plane to land on the old airstrip adjacent to the church — have a peek @cooksonadventures to get the picture — you can only visit the island on a full moon or an empty moon and one day either side. So six days a month for only eight months of the year. And that’s if the weather is in your favour when you race by 4WD and small boat to squeeze a visit into the three-hour gap at the lowest tide. It’s strange. A curious mix of jeopardy and adrenaline, beauty and desolation. In the abundance of birdlife, there’s also a feeling of nature doing its best to take this splinter of the Namib Desert back. @angola__tourism #angola🇦🇴 taken in Ilha dos Tigres by @sophy_roberts

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5 days ago

🇦🇴 #Angola ❤️🖤💛 here we go by @sophy_roberts

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6 days ago

A little sneak peek of the story out this weekend in @ft_weekend — riding with @alexandratolstoy in a remote part of western #Kyrgyzstan, weaving between #SilkRoad ruins and the afterimages of Central Asia’s Soviet past. I hope you enjoy the article. taken in Kyrgyzstan by @sophy_roberts

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11 days ago

Southern #Tanzania 🇹🇿 — a much overlooked landscape, overflowing with story, on a wilderness scale I’ve not encountered for years. Guided by Tanzanian Ed Ghaui @nyererefishing, and Ben Simpson — the gifted pilot-pioneer @tropichelicopters @tropicairkenya I’ve worked with for more than 15 years, in Chad, the DRCongo and the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. More behind-the-scenes on IG stories — with the full feature coming soon, collaborating with @tom_parker_photographer #onassignment #africa taken in Tanzania by @sophy_roberts

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15 days ago

I spent a very long time travelling slowly through Tanzania to write my last book. I thought I’d got to know it a little. I was wrong. The last few days working with @ben_kenya @tropichelicopters have made me confront my ignorance about the vastness of this country — and its MANIFOLD, magnificent secrets, including some of the most impenetrable old growth relic forests left on Earth. Hope — that’s what these breathing trees stand for. Hope hope hope. Lots more to follow as I gather a record number of notepads from the last week’s work for one of those stories that comes along under the rarest of new moons. #udzwunganationalpark #forest #tanzania 🇹🇿💚🇹🇿 taken in Tanzania by @sophy_roberts

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17 days ago

Back in #Tanzania — on a new story into remote territory. I love this country. Love love love. 🇹🇿 by @sophy_roberts

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21 days ago

Love this woman. @lucylaucht. I’ve admired her work for a very long time. But we’ve never collaborated on stories together. Then, a few weeks ago, we met by chance here in #Kyrgyzstan — and discovered we shared so many of the same values and interests. More coming soon, I hope, as we plot some new travels where only women can venture … 😉😘 taken in Kyrgyzstan by @sophy_roberts

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23 days ago

Vienna — Visiting my German-language publisher @zsolnayverlag (The smell of books! The care of serious editors! A meeting with my wonderful translator @brigittehilzensauer 💫💥!). A talk at the inspiring @brunokreiskyforum with @tessaszyszkowitz (what a legacy he left for democracy and dialogue). And a visit to @kunsthistorischesmuseumvienna prompted by @londonrossgirl to go and see the city’s special collection of 2000-year-old Fayoum portraits from Egypt. A perfect 24 hours.

Next stop, Genoa. Then Tanzania. Then Angola. After a long summer with family, a busy few months ahead. taken in Vienna, Austria by @sophy_roberts

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a month ago

Is wonder something we encounter by chance, or an experience we can cultivate? Has twenty-first-century life dulled our capacity for awe? Might learning to look again change not only what we see, but how we live?

During the last couple of weeks in Kyrgyzstan, I’ve spent my days amazed by a part of the world where nature still feels bigger — far bigger — than my nagging despair we’ve destroyed a critical source of our wondering instinct. I’ve spent my nights in a tent scribbling notes on ‘Reaching for Wonderment’ to prepare for Saturday’s talk @bigbruefestival in #Bruton Somerset. Please come if you can. I’ll be in conversation with neuroscientist and perception researcher @beaulotto, and music journalist John Harris. Who knows where the conversation will deviate, but for me, it’s in those unpredictable spaces that the meaningful surprises usually lie.

Our session will be guided by journalist and moderator, @georginacgodwin. For tickets and more, follow @bigbruefestival. The other conversations I’m looking forward to? @juliasamuelmbe and Bob Geldof. And @bruceparrytribe on mushrooms and the mind 🍄💥💫. taken in Kyrgyzstan by @sophy_roberts

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a month ago

Without translation, we build little territories of silence. Which is why foreign language editions of my book mean so much to writers. For me, they are everything. They help the stories I gather in the field to live on as acts of resistance against the tyranny of collective forgetting.

Over the last couple of weeks since its release in German, I can tell from the media reviews that my book’s translator, Brigitte Hilzensauer, has (ONCE AGAIN) elevated the original. Brigitte translated ‘The Lost Pianos of Siberia’. She has stuck with me for a ‘A Training School for Elephants’. She has the subtlety and skill to bring levels of flow and nuance to the prose which is giving this book life among new readers. Winning it spots on TV and radio. Helping to make it book of the week with Austria’s national broadcaster @orf. So thank you — not just to Brigitte, and the brilliant team @zsolnayverlag, but to all my foreign language translators and publishers, just out and upcoming, in Flemish, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish and Italian. Authors need support in times like these, with literary nonfiction falling in popularity versus the boom in podcasting. A “well published” book is very different from just a published one. That’s my point, I suppose, in a world of words being challenged from every angle, from the cult of the celebrity memoir to the invasion of AI…

#translation #nonfictionbooks #bookoftheweek #translator by @sophy_roberts

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a month ago