ROBERT MACFARLANE - Is A River Alive?

COMING 1st MAY 2025
 
SPECIAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOP EDITIONS AVAILABLE WHILE STOCK LASTS.
These will be signed and stamped by the author, with exclusive end papers (credit Daniel Coe) and ribbon marker, plus additional content - an extra page at the end of the book containing a 'Riversong', a broadsheet poem written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Nick Hayes.

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.