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 his
international bestseller 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." Global in its geography and
written with great lyricism and power, Underland speaks powerfully
to our present moment. Taking a deep-time view of our planet,
Macfarlane here asks a vital and unsettling question: "Are we being
good ancestors to the future Earth?" Underland marks a new turn in
Macfarlane's long-term mapping of the relations of landscape and
the human heart. From its remarkable opening pages to its deeply
moving conclusion, it is a journey into wonder, loss, fear, and
hope. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change
the way you see the world.
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