Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Product Description

National Bestseller • New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” • NPR “Favorite Books of 2019” • Guardian “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award “Mesmerizing…Underland is a portal of light in dark times.” ―Terry Tempest Williams, New York Times Book Review
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. 24 illustrations

Review

“Profound in every sense of the word.”
―
Richard Powers, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory

“An excellent book―fearless and subtle, empathic and strange.”
―
Dwight Garner, New York Times

“Reading Macfarlane connects us to dazzling new worlds. It’s a connection that brings, more than anything else, joy.”
―
Barbara J. King, NPR

“Remarkable…
Underland may be [Macfarlane’s] masterpiece.”
―
Colin Thubron, New York Review of Books

“One of the most ambitious works of narrative non-fiction of our age.”
―
William Dalrymple, Guardian

“[Robert Macfarlane’s] writing is luminous, intense.…[B]rilliant notes from the underground.”
―
Huw Lewis-Jones, Nature

“[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

“The most impressive exercise of imagination and scholarship I’ve come across lately.…A reader never will forget this journey through geologic time.”
―
Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“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

From the Back Cover

“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

About the Author

Robert Macfarlane’s prize-winning and best-selling books include
Mountains of the Mind,
The Old Ways,
Landmarks, and, with Jackie Morris,
The Lost Words. He lives in Cambridge, England, where he is a Fellow of the University of Cambridge.