In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time--from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come--Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.
Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.
[Macfarlane] seems to metabolize landscape into lyrics as he walks.--Rachel Riederer "Outside"
Through this series of haunting descents, Macfarlane plumbs the strange and alarming ways we've changed the world and resurfaces with revelations about how to orient us to the future, weaving landscape and language together.--Kate Yoder "Grist"
With Underland Macfarlane gives us a work of nature writing for the age--and for the ages. Its eloquent but urgent prose reveals our complex relationship with nature while pushing us to think more deeply about earth's sublime underneath.--Amy Brady "Gizmodo"
Reading Macfarlane connects us to dazzling new worlds. It's a connection that brings, more than anything else, joy.--Barbara J. King "NPR"
[Robert Macfarlane's] writing is luminous, intense....[B]rilliant notes from the underground.--Huw Lewis-Jones "Nature"
Jacket Description/Back:
"Brilliant."
- Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle
"Incantatory."
- Marcia Bjornerud, Wall Street Journal
"Chilling."
- Nathan Deuel, Los Angeles Times
"Visionary."
- Bathsheba Demuth, Chicago Review of Books
"Exquisite."
- Ryan J. Haupt, Science
"Quietly prophetic."
- Jedediah Purdy, Atlantic
"[Macfarlane's] best and most lyrical book."
- Economist
Robert Macfarlane's best-selling books include Underland, The Old Ways, and Mountains of the Mind. With the artist Jackie Morris he is the coauthor of The Lost Words, The Lost Spells, and The Book of Birds. He is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature and the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence and is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
W. W Norton & Company
Pub Date: August 18, 2020
ISBN: 9780393358094
1.3" H x 8.0" L x 5.4" W
496 pages
paperback