writer about nature, climate, landscape, people and place, and his books –– which include Underland (2019), a book-length prose-poem Ness (2018), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012) and Mountains of the Mind (2003) –– have been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for music, film, television, radio and theatre.
Macfarlane's new book, Is a River Alive?, is his most personal and political work to date.
At the Waterstones blog the author tagged "five books that present the complexity and importance of rivers through both fiction and non-fiction." One title on the list:
A River Runs Through It by Norman MacleanRead about the other entries on the list.
I have long thought Maclean’s novella to be one of the most perfect pieces of English prose of the twentieth century, from its unforgettable first sentence (‘In our family, there was no clear line between religion and flyfishing’) to its last (‘I am haunted by waters’). It unfurls in the fast-running mountain rivers of western Montana, where two brothers, both obsessive fly-fishermen, follow very different courses in life. I have read it six times now, and each time it yields new wonders to me.
A River Runs Through It is among Jeff Somers's five novels that play with time and Eric Blehm's most influential books.
--Marshal Zeringue
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