Is a River Alive?

Author: Robert Macfarlane

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Description

From the celebrated writer and observer Robert Macfarlane comes this brilliant, perspective-shifting new book - which answers a resounding yes to the question of its titleAt its heart 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. Inspired by the activists, artists and lawmakers of the young 'Rights of Nature' movement, Macfarlane takes the reader on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept.Is a River Alive? 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 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 under way.The third is to north-eastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river - the Mutehekau or Magpie - is being defended from death by damming in a river-rights campaign.Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream who rises a mile from Macfarlane's house, and flows through his own years and days.Passionate, immersive and revelatory, Is a River Alive? is at once Macfarlane's most personal and most political book to date. It is a book that will open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives. Lit throughout by other minds and voices, it invites us radically to reimagine not only rivers but also life itself. At the centre of this vital, beautiful book is the recognition that our fate flows with that of rivers - and always has.

Critic Reviews

Everyone who has ever found something to love in a river should find something to love in this book. It is a masterpiece The Economist
One of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025 – a new book by Robert Macfarlane . . . Personal as well as political, it’s almost as certain to shift readerly perspectives as it is to be a bestseller Observer, ‘Nonfiction to look forward to in 2025’
A rich and visionary work of immense beauty. Macfarlane is a memory keeper. What is broken in our societies, he mends with words. Rarely does a book hold such power, passion, and poetry in its exploration of nature. Read this to feel inspired, moved, and ultimately, alive -- Elif Shafak
This book is a beautiful, wild exploration of an ancient idea: that rivers are living participants in a living world. Robert Macfarlane’s astonishing telling of the lives of three rivers reveals how these vital flow forms have the power not only to shape and reshape the planet, but also our thoughts, feelings, and worldviews. Is a River Alive? is a breathtaking work that speaks powerfully to this moment of crisis and transformation -- Merlin Sheldrake
This book is itself a river of poetic prose, an invitation to get onboard and float through the rapids of encounters with places and people, the eddies of ideas, to navigate the resurgence of Indigenous worldviews through three extraordinary journeys recounted with a vividness that lifts readers out of themselves and into these waterscapes. 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
Profound and playful, revelatory and realistic, intimate and epic, humble and absolutely huge – this supremely enjoyable masterpiece will change the world -- Patrick Barkham
In answering this essential question of matter or life-force, Macfarlane has created a braided, roaring and brilliant book that is a true landmark in more-than-human writing . . . A personal and beautifully poetic polemic, this may be Macfarlane’s best book yet -- Rob Cowen
Shattering and sublime, Is a River Alive? offers a question, an answer, and perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity of our times: to accept our place in the mesh of things and act accordingly in the interests of the whole -- Amy Jane Beer
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
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

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 a book-length prose-poem, Ness. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, won 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, Karine Polwart and Johnny Flynn, with whom he has released two albums, Lost In The Cedar Wood (2021) and The Moon Also Rises (2023). In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2022 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is currently completing his third book with Jackie Morris- The Lost Birds.