Hardcover
Fish on your plate have a hidden, often dangerous, journey.

Every Last Fish

What Fish Do for Us and What We Do to Them

$43.26

  • Hardcover

    320 pages

  • Release Date

    6 January 2026

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Summary

Cold-blooded, slippery, wet and strange: fish can be hard to think of as fellow animals and easier to consider as food. But what do we know of these creatures on our plates, and what do we know of how they got there?

In Every Last Fish, Rose George takes us inside the vast legal industries that support our appetite for fish fingers and salmon sandwiches, and the equally colossal illegal fishing trade whose practices and standards are unmonitored and often dangerous. It introd…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781783787920
ISBN-10:1783787929
Author:Rose George
Publisher:Granta Books
Imprint:Granta Books
Format:Hardcover
Number of Pages:320
Release Date:6 January 2026
Weight:520g
Dimensions:156mm x 234mm
A-Format
B-Format
C-Format
Every Last Fish by Rose George - ISBN: 9781783787920
156 × 234 mm
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

An eye-widening and gulp-inducing read… George’s deep affection and respect for her subjects - fishers and fish - make this a book full of nuance and heart, as well as outrage * Sunday Times *
George has made a specialism of lifting the lid on forces that keep the world turning but we just don’t notice… This brilliant, urgent book might be her most important yet * Radio Times *
[George] presents her material with as much aplomb as a top chef presenting a grilled Dover sole… Honest, clear-sighted and recommendable * Literary Review *
Rose George is a fearless and dogged reporter, one of our best… [She] writes with heart, heat, and wit… I’ve loved all Rose George’s books, but I think I love this one most – Mary Roach
Every Last Fish, Rose George’s exploration of commercial overfishing, is a reminder of how careless we are with our planet’s vanishing bounty of underwater life. It’s a warning of the consequences of such carelessness. But it’s also a story of our beautiful and fascinating underwater worlds and of the sometimes unexpected ways we try not to destroy but to protect them… – Deborah Blum * Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Quest for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century *
Once again Rose George, equipped with wide-ranging curiosity and bracing dashes of coruscating humor, takes us on an astoundingly eye-opening journey through the overlooked and everyday-this time the toll, in terms human and pelagic, of our consumption of fish – Tom Vanderbilt * author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and Beginners *
It’s hard to imagine creatures more different from us than fish. Yet as Rose George reminds us in this rollicking, often elegiac account, our fates are intertwined. Every Last Fish deftly captures our shared story through the humans: eccentric, passionate, and trepidatious – Florence Williams * author of The Nature Fix: Why Being in Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative *
Highly recommended for those interested in sustainable practices * Library Journal *
The scope of George’s book is broad, and many subjects are explored with her characteristic deftness, passion and wit * Times Literary Supplement *
[A] wide-ranging, heartfelt, meticulously assembled account of our oceans… This is an important book, communicating its message as much through stories of ordinary fisherfolk as the devastating power of facts * Spectator *
[An] excellent book * Herald Scotland *

About The Author

Rose George

Rose George is the author of:

  • A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World (long-listed for the Ulysses Reportage Prize)
  • The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste (shortlisted for the BMA Book Prize)
  • Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Brings You 90% of Everything (winner of a Mountbatten Maritime Award)
  • Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Mysterious, Miraculous World of Blood (shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize)

Rose writes frequently for the Guardian, New Statesman, and many other publications. Her two TED talks, on sanitation and seafaring, have had several million views. If she is not writing, she is probably up a hill, fell-running.

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