Synopses & Reviews
Hailed as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler" (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada--imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane's house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane's dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers--and always has.
About the Author
Robert Macfarlane' is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people, and place. His best-selling books include
Underland,
Landmarks,
The Old Ways,
The Wild Places, and
Mountains of the Mind; they have been translated into more than
thirty languages, won many prizes around the world and been widely
adapted for film, music, theatre, radio, and dance. He has also written
operas, plays, and films including
River and
Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated
with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the
artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally best-selling
books of nature-poetry and art,
The Lost Words and
The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and
Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature. Macfarlane
lives in Cambridge, England, where he is a fellow of Emmanuel College,
Cambridge.