SHORTLISTED FOR BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2026
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.
2025 BOOK OF THE YEAR ACCORDING TO SPECTATOR, I PAPER, ECONOMIST, ESQUIRE, TIME
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2026
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SHERBORNE PRIZE FOR TRAVEL WRITING 2026
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2026
About the Author
Robert Macfarlane's Sunday Times- and New York Times-bestselling books include Is a River Alive?, 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, albums, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe.
Macfarlane has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson, 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. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded
+91 9818282497
(2).png)
