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
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 him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is presently working on a graphic novel re-telling of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Macfarlane and Morris's latest project, The Book of Birds, will be published in May 2026.
Industry Reviews
This book is itself a river of poetic prose, an invitation to get onboard and float through the rapids of encounters with places and people, the eddies of ideas, to navigate the resurgence of Indigenous worldviews through three extraordinary journeys recounted with a vividness that lifts readers out of themselves and into these waterscapes. Read it for pleasure, read it for illumination, read it for confirmation that our world is changing in wonderful as well as terrible ways
-Rebecca Solnit
One of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025 – a new book by Robert Macfarlane . . . Personal as well as political, it’s almost as certain to shift readerly perspectives as it is to be a bestseller
-Observer, ‘Nonfiction to look forward to in 2025’
Is A River Alive? is a beautifully written, poetic testament to the vitality of the Earth and the forms of politics that can be based upon that premise
-Amitav Ghosh
This book is a beautiful, wild exploration of an ancient idea: that rivers are living participants in a living world. Robert Macfarlane’s astonishing telling of the lives of three rivers reveals how these vital flow forms have the power not only to shape and reshape the planet, but also our thoughts, feelings, and worldviews. Is a River Alive? is a breathtaking work that speaks powerfully to this moment of crisis and transformation
-Merlin Sheldrake
Robert Macfarlane is a once-in-a-generation virtuoso, and I don’t know when his kaleidoscopic language and world-expanding scholarship have been used to more potent effect than in this impassioned, resounding affirmative to the title’s urgent question
-John Vaillant
Is a River Alive? is one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time—exciting, brilliantly comprehensive, mind-altering. In one of its many stunning moments, Macfarlane describes the myriad rivers trapped and buried under the concrete of our cities. "Daylighting" occurs on those rare occasions when these ghost-rivers are dug out & released to the surface to feel the sun, to expand—majestic creatures—and spread life once again. To read this book is to feel your ghosted soul undergo such "daylighting"—metaphysical, political, emotional, linguistic. Any soul going dormant, any citizen going numb, will be revivified and propelled back to their essential core, where rage, wonder, and imagination intertwine, and a powerful hope for the earth arises. A spellbinding, life-changing work
-Jorie Graham
Like its subject, Is a River Alive? is work of flow and counter-flow. It is lyrical, evocative, closely observed, and deeply moving. Robert Macfarlane offers new ways to think and, just as importantly, feel about the majestic and mysterious non-human world
-Elizabeth Kolbert
Profound and playful, revelatory and realistic, intimate and epic, humble and absolutely huge – this supremely enjoyable masterpiece will change the world
-Patrick Barkham
Shattering and sublime, Is a River Alive? offers a question, an answer, and perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity of our times: to accept our place in the mesh of things and act accordingly in the interests of the whole
-Amy Jane Beer
A rich and visionary work of immense beauty. Macfarlane is a memory keeper. What is broken in our societies, he mends with words. Rarely does a book hold such power, passion, and poetry in its exploration of nature. Read this to feel inspired, moved, and ultimately, alive
-Elif Shafak
In answering this essential question of matter or life-force, Macfarlane has created a braided, roaring and brilliant book that is a true landmark in more-than-human writing . . . A personal and beautifully poetic polemic, this may be Macfarlane’s best book yet
-Rob Cowen
