In medieval Europe, a wolf moon is the first full moon of the year. A winter night when lupine predators were at their hungriest and their howls rang out. For Akbar, an insomniac theatre critic who is afraid of the dark, the night is an uneasy place. Wolf Moon is her deeply personal voyage into the nocturnal world, as Akbar challenges herself to survive lightless nights on Sark, the world’s first “dark sky island” or last through Ruth Wilson’s 24-hour play The Second Woman.
Sleep has not come easy to London-born Akbar since childhood, a trait she traces to her family’s move here from Pakistan. They became temporarily homeless, surviving in a “disused building in north London” until a council flat was found. “I see how my insomnia might be a reaction against the early chaos,” writes Akbar.
Family is the motivator for several of her night-time expeditions. Akbar haunts the corridors of the Courtauld Gallery just before closing, hoping to retrace the steps of her father’s final job — as a night guard — before he was afflicted with frontal-lobe dementia. He now lives in a care home, and Akbar shadows a worker on a night shift at a similar institution.
It’s gonzo journalism of a cerebral kind. Akbar is careful to match her emotive observations of the night economy workers with the science facts. Night shifts are not so great for humans — they disrupt our hormonal balance, leading to poor health. It’s especially true for women, who often take those shifts to fit around childcare.
In Wolf Moon’s most unsettling chapters, Akbar immerses herself in the gendered dangers of the night. After Sarah Everard is kidnapped from the dark streets of Clapham during the pandemic, Akbar books into a garish Ripper Tour, drawing a queasy parallel between historic true crime tourism and the ever-present dangers posed to lone women by men at night. Hungry wolves are not a threat in moonlit modern London, but there are other predators. “These men stalk the streets I have dared to call my own,” Akbar writes, enraged.
Wolf Moon is an odd release for summer, when the night is all but banished. But if the heat is keeping you from sleep, this book is a worthy companion for the witching hours.
India Block is a columnist at The London Standard
Wolf Moon: A Woman’s Journey into the Night by Arifa Akbar is out now (Hachette UK, £16.99)
