Magdalena
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  • Published: 28 April 2020
  • ISBN: 9781847926111
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Magdalena

River of Dreams

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Nov 2021
Tr. Paperback
28 Apr 2020
EBook
20 Aug 2020
Audiobook
20 Aug 2020
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From the bestselling author and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize: the epic story of Colombia's Rio Magdalena and of the country's past, present and future

A captivating new book from Wade Davis - winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Into the Silence - that brings vividly to life the story of the great Río Magdalena, illuminating Colombia's complex past, present, and future.

Travellers often become enchanted with the first country that captures their hearts and gives them license to be free. For Wade Davis, it was Colombia. Now in a masterful new book, the bestselling author tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of a land that is home to the greatest ecological and geographical diversity on the planet. Only in Colombia can a traveller wash ashore in a coastal desert, follow waterways through wetlands as wide as the sky, ascend narrow tracks through dense tropical forests, and reach verdant Andean valleys rising to soaring ice-clad summits. This wild and impossible geography finds its perfect coefficient in the topography of the Colombian spirit: restive, potent, at times placid and calm, in moments tortured and twisted.

Both a corridor of commerce and a fountain of culture, the wellspring of Colombian music, literature, poetry and prayer, the Magdalena has served in dark times as the graveyard of the nation. And yet, always, it returns as a river of life. At once an absorbing adventure and an inspiring tale of hope and redemption, Magdalena gives us a rare, kaleidoscopic picture of a nation on the verge of a new period of peace. Braiding together memoir, history, and journalism, Wade Davis tells the story of the country's most magnificent river, and in doing so, tells the epic story of Colombia.
  • Published: 28 April 2020
  • ISBN: 9781847926111
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

About the author

Wade Davis

Wade Davis is a multi award-winning writer and acclaimed photographer whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, Polynesia to the Arctic. Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society from 2000 to 2013, he is currently Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. He is the bestselling author of 22 books, including One River, The Wayfinders and Into the Silence, which was awarded the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize. In 2016, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2018 he became an Honorary Citizen of Colombia.

portrait photo of Wade Davis

Also by Wade Davis

Into The Silence
One River
See all

Praise for Magdalena

Anyone who wishes to understand this mysterious corner of the world deserves Magdalena. It is a capacious, generous and illuminating book

—Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Davis stocks his lively narrative with piquant characters, dramatic historical set pieces, and lyrical nature writing. The result is a rich, fascinating study of how nature and a people shape each other

Publishers Weekly

After all our agonies, Wade Davis, through the evocative power of his writing and the clarity of his understanding, gives us all reason to once again love Colombia. That is the wonder of his book, which in many ways reads as a love letter to a nation

Héctor Abad, author of Oblivion

Shimmering... Never wincing from dark histories, yet never abandoning hope, Wade Davis shows us why Colombia stole his heart as a young traveller and holds it still

Kate Harris, author of Lands of Lost Borders

A magnificent, hugely important book, breathtaking in its scope and vision … a masterpiece … an epic journey across the nation and into its beating heart …essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Colombia

Anna Lewington

[Magdalena] is a rallying cry to save the Magdalena from the destructive effects of industrialisation, but it also aims to reset our impressions of the country as a whole... [Davis's] passion for Colombia is better expressed in the depth of information he delivers - and the poetic way in which he captures its extraordinary landscape. Those pondering a trip will be inspired to veer off the tourist path

Jenny Coad, The Times

Davis is a powerful, penetrating and immensely knowledgeable writer

Charles Nicholl, Guardian, *Book of the Week*

Davis suffuses his reportage with a visionary tinge. But his subject more than warrants it

Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times

Magdalena is a revelatory and often enchanting book

Economist

This book is the culmination of a lifetime's work in the country and is suffused with a love and knowledge that only such long acquaintance can bring

Hugh Thomson, Spectator

Passionate and profoundly engaged... [Davis'] presentation of the great river as Colombia's Mississippi, its fountain of music, the source of its many contradictions...generates an impact that few travel books can muster.

Brian Morton, Tablet

Music and myth, commerce and colonialism, indigeneity and identity: Magdalena is as impressively exploratory in approach as it is encyclopaedic in scope

Oliver Balch, Times Literary Supplement