Is a River Alive?

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

The deep sincerity Robert Macfarlane brings to his efforts to meet the rivers in Ecuador, India and (especially) Quebec with his whole being makes ‘Is A River Alive?’ a very special read. That and the generous spotlight he shines on those who’ve dedicated their lives to saving the rivers in their midst. Inevitably, his explorations beget another question for us all: ‘How alive can a human be to a river (or any other species)?

Jini Reddy

Everyone who has ever found something to love in a river should find something to love in this book. It is a masterpiece

The Economist