How to Love the World
Ilka’s third novel, How to Love the World, will be published by Summit Books in 2026.
Perhaps motherhood is always a promise that cannot be kept.
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When her children are born, Nellika vows she will be the perfect mother. Motherhood is sacred, mythic: it will remake everything that is broken in her. But as her children grow, something buried is awakened, and the myth begins to crack.
Only the cool, green silence of the forest, where Nellika walks every day, can soothe what is repeatedly torn apart by family life. One morning, deep in a remote part of the forest, she is struck by a falling manna gum branch. Shockingly injured and unable to move, her only hope is that someone will find her.
As darkness falls on what might be her last day, Nellika must reckon with herself and the place where she lies. Is this fallen branch an accident or a punishment? As death draws close, the forest asks her: why should you live? And in the dark heart of her memories, she discovers that there is an answer.
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A powerful meditation on nature and healing, How to Love the World finds hope where none seems possible.
What people are saying:
“A fierce, tender, unflinchingly honest novel about motherhood, selfhood, the meaning of home and the fragile miracle of being alive. Compelling, wise and impossible to forget. I adored it.” — Emily Maguire
“How To Love The World is a remarkable book. It conveys a tender love for Country and family, while recognising the destructive potential of both. This is also a story of courage and nail-biting drama. Ilka Tampke is a writer who deeply values language and storytelling. This is a book that will not leave you.” — Tony Birch
“I’ve never been so breathlessly invested in a fictional character’s fate. A soaring hymn of praise - to motherhood, to nature, to the fragility of human existence.” — Sian Prior
“Tampke’s sentences gleam. A vivid and courageous book.” — Carrie Tiffany
“What does it take to remake yourself? How to Love the World doesn’t shy away from the intensity and challenges such as reckoning demands. The result is a book that is as life affirming and beautiful as it is shattering.” — Sophie Cunningham
“I devoured this book, enlivened by the gorgeous depictions of the natural world and captivated by the robust meditation on love, anger, and regret. Ilka Tampke captures both the exquisite beauty of the forest alongside the light and shade of a life. Hypnotic, poetic, and devastating, How to Love the World explores the uneven texture of motherhood, and artistry, with painful precision and courageous depth.” — Gemma Parker, author of The Mother is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why
“A gritty, luscious, eucalyptus-scented novel shot through with anxiety and the dark beauty of forest. How To Love the World unpicks the paradoxes of motherhood -- the love, the suffocation, the violence, the joy -- weaving ideas of belonging and un-belonging, roots and deracination, blood, soul, and longing into an entanglement that for Nelika the protagonist is equally destructive and regenerative.” — Miranda Darling, author of Thunderhead