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.
