This magnificent book arrived in the post today. I am going to read it asap. Meanwhile, I figured I should post the book blurb. It is published by Penguin Random House India.

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

At 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. Is a River Alive? takes the reader on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept.

The book flows first to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened by goldmining.

Then, to the wounded rivers, creeks and lagoons of southern India, where a desperate battle to save the lives of these waterbodies is under way.

And finally, 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.

At once Macfarlane’s most personal and most political book to date, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, spark debates and lead us to the revelation that our fate flows with that of rivers – and always has.

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.

“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, 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, author of Orwell’s Roses

“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, 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 

3 June 2025