Overview

Hailed as the great nature writer of this generation (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. In this highly anticipated sequel to The Old Ways, Macfarlane takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Traveling through deep time--the dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present--he moves from the birth of the universe to a post-human future, from the prehistoric art of Norwegian sea caves to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, from Bronze Age funeral chambers to the catacomb labyrinth below Paris, and from the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate to a deep-sunk hiding place where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come. Woven through Macfarlane's own travels are the unforgettable stories of descents into the underland made across history by explorers, artists, cavers, divers, mourners, dreamers, and murderers, all of whom have been drawn for different reasons to seek what Cormac McCarthy calls the awful darkness within the world.

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9781665123471

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Reviews

A gifted storyteller and poetic writer...Wherever [Macfarlane] travels, he enhances our sense of wonder. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A series of lyrical, unnerving explorations, from ancient forests to urban catacombs to caves of ice, that probe humanity's sometimes wondrous, often malign, relationship with the world beneath our feet. -- New York Times Book Review A sterling book. -- Library Journal (starred review) An eye-opening, lyrical, and even moving exploration. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Astonishing...A powerful, epic journey for anyone wondering about the world below and all around us and, perhaps more important, for those who aren't. -- Booklist (starred review)

Author Information

Robert Macfarlane is the author of the prizewinning Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places, both of which were New York Times Notable Books. He has contributed to Harper's, Granta, the Observer, Times Literary Supplement, and London Review of Books. He is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Matthew Waterson was born in Los Angeles. After university in Boston and drama school in London, he now lives in NY where he works in theater and voice over. In voice work he has been heard on ESPN, ABC, Speed Channel, Logo, and inDemand. He is the radio voice of Twinings Tea and the voice of Sabra Dips.

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