Is a River Alive? - by Robert MacFarlane (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the celebrated writer, observer and naturalist Robert Macfarlane comes a brilliant, perspective-shifting new book, which answers a resounding "yes" to the question of its title.

At the heart of Is a River Alive? is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings, who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Macfarlane takes the reader on a mind-expanding global journey into the history, futures, people and places of the ancient, urgent concept.

Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming. But a powerful movement is also underway to recognize the lives and the rights of rivers, and to re-animate our relationships with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share. The young "rights of nature" movement has lit up activists, artists, law-makers and politicians across six continents--and become the focus for revolutionary thinking about rivers in particular.

The book flows like water, from the mountains to the sea, over three major journeys. The first is to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened with destruction by Canadian gold-mining. The second is to the wounded rivers, creeks and lagoons of southern India, where a desperate battle to save the lives of these waterbodies is underway. The third is to northeastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river--the Mutehekau or Magpie--is being defended from death by damming in a river-rights campaign led by an extraordinary Innu poet and leader called Rita Mestokosho.

Is A River Alive? is at once a literary work of art, a rallying cry and a catalyst for change. It is a book that will open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives. A clarion call to re-centre rivers in our stories, law and politics, it invites us to radically re-imagine not only rivers but life itself. At the heart of this vital, beautiful book is the recognition that our fate flows with that of rivers--and always has.

Review Quotes

A New York Times Bestseller - A #1 Sunday Times Bestseller
Finalist for the Banff Mountain Book Competition in Environmental Literature
Finalist for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

"Robert Macfarlane is a once-in-a-generation virtuoso, and I don't know when his kaleidoscopic language and world-expanding scholarship have been used to more potent effect than in this impassioned, resounding affirmative to the title's urgent question."
--JOHN VAILLANT, author of Fire Weather

"Is a River Alive? is itself a river of poetic prose. . . . Read it for pleasure, read it for illumination, read it for confirmation that our world is changing in wonderful as well as terrible ways."
--REBECCA SOLNIT, author of Orwell's Roses

"Is a River Alive? is a breathtaking work that speaks powerfully to this moment of crisis and transformation."
--MERLIN SHELDRAKE, author of Entangled Life

"Is a River Alive? is one of the best books I've read in a very long time--exciting, brilliantly comprehensive, mind-altering. In one of its many stunning moments, Macfarlane describes the myriad rivers trapped and buried under the concrete of our cities. 'Daylighting' occurs on those rare occasions when these ghost-rivers are dug out & released to the surface to feel the sun, to expand--majestic creatures--and spread life once again. To read this book is to feel your ghosted soul undergo such 'daylighting'--metaphysical, political, emotional, linguistic. Any soul going dormant, any citizen going numb, will be revivified and propelled back to their essential core, where rage, wonder, and imagination intertwine, and a powerful hope for the earth arises. A spellbinding, life-changing work."
--JORIE GRAHAM, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

"Is a River Alive? is a beautifully written, poetic testament to the vitality of the Earth and the forms of politics that can be based upon that premise."
--AMITAV GHOSH, author of Sea of Poppies

"Like its subject, Is a River Alive? is a work of flow and counter-flow. It is lyrical, evocative, closely observed and deeply moving. Robert Macfarlane offers new ways to think and, just as importantly, feel about the majestic and mysterious non-human world."
--ELIZABETH KOLBERT, author of The Sixth Extinction

"[A] lyrical hybrid narrative of travel, history, and environmentalism."
―The New York Times

"[A] meld of real-world urgency and an enchanting sort of magical realism."
―The Bookseller

"[Macfarlane's] prose aspires to poetry."
―The Guardian

"The Book is a delight. The writing on nature is so stirring, so surprising, so acute. And lavish: you could gorge yourself on [Macfarlane's] metaphors and similes. . . . The storytelling . . . is gripping. . . . A masterclass in how to write about travel, fear and, well, yourself."
―The Times

"[Macfarlane] shows a sharper critical edge than in his earlier work but also engages more personally and emotionally with his material. Wrecked or restored relationships between humans and the natural world prompt the writer, like a contemporary William Blake, to throw down a moral gauntlet to those who hold economic and political power. . . . [Is a River Alive?] provides timely and necessary inspiration."
―The Conversation

"Forceful, thoughtful and beautiful."
―The Economist

"Macfarlane's book is a grand gesture . . . to reimagine our human obligation to the planet--not as anthropomorphic invention but as (re)discovery of an original, and now lost, trust."
―Los Angeles Review of Books

"[Macfarlane] takes us on a series of exhilarating journeys across the globe, urging us to vest rights in natural objects. . . . With crystalline clarity and force, Macfarlane confronts the gross failure of our existing laws to protect rivers from harm."
―Financial Times

"Few nature writers working today produce work with the unassuming elegance and undisguised wonder that are evident on Macfarlane's every page."
―NPR

"A profoundly beautiful and moving work."
―The Boston Globe

"Composed equally of captivating nature writing and travelogue, Macfarlane's book is an urgent call to recognize the extraordinary wealth in uncaptured rivers and to restore those which have been polluted, cemented and dried beyond recognition. . . . Macfarlane's lyrical narration captures both his wonder at interconnected river systems and his lament at their degradation."
―Boston Review

"A powerful confluence of environmentalism and sublime prose. . . . This book, like Macfarlane's rivers, is profoundly alive. Is a River Alive? is a powerful synthesis of literature, activism and ethics reshaping the way we perceive the natural world."
―The Observer

"The narrative pull is strong in this book. I kept wanting to go back to it. Macfarlane has yet again demonstrated his genius as an author in creating a book that is alive, that has personality, that talked to me. I was sad when it ended. It has flowed into my daily thoughts ever since, much like a river continues to flow into the sea."
―The Standard

"In fluid prose that rivals his poetic work . . . Is a River Alive? captures the wonder of life and its small beings."
―Prospect

About the Author

ROBERT MACFARLANE is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people and place. His bestselling books include Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as the book-length prose-poem, Ness. His work has 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 closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. As a lyricist and performer, he has written albums and songs with musicians including Cosmo Sheldrake, Julie Fowlis and Johnny Flynn, with whom he has released two albums, Lost In The Cedar Wood and The Moon Also Rises. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of nonfiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.