Is a River Alive?

De: Robert Macfarlane

Narrado por: Robert Macfarlane

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

© Robert Macfarlane 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Reseñas de la Crítica

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

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

The book is a delight . . . So stirring, so surprising, so acute

Is a River Alive? is a powerful synthesis of literature, activism and ethics, reshaping the way we perceive the natural world (Alex Preston)

The narrative pull is strong in this book. I kept wanting to go back to it. Macfarlane has yet again demonstrated his genius as an author in creating a book that is alive, that has personality, that talked to me. I was sad when it ended. It has flowed into my daily thoughts ever since, much like a river continues to flow into the sea

Beautiful, wild and wildly provocative

Macfarlane confronts the realities of the living, beating heart of the riverine world . . . With crystalline clarity and force, Macfarlane confronts the gross failure of our existing laws to protect rivers from harm . . . Such ideas are brought to life by the quality of the writing, the evocation of mood and place, the raw smells and energies that accompany Macfarlane, whether on a gentle walk into a Cambridge wood, or hurtling with mortal speed down a Canadian rapid

It will change the way you think about rivers, and in turn, nature herself

Impassioned and invigorating . . . Macfarlane is erudite and eclectic, and, though charismatic, doesn’t press his presence upon you. His books are adventurous, often involving truly remarkable companions; and at the sentence level no one could accuse him of painting by numbers . . .

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)

A brilliant, haunting, compelling journey

Inspiring and above all motivating. As a Canadian and as an Australian, I now appreciate to a much greater extent the beauty of those two lands and the threats we all face with climate change and the ecological destruction around us.

A thoroughly engaging and brilliant read

As Audible listeners will know, not all authors are the best narrators of their own books, but you may confidently add engaged - and engaging - narration to author Robert Macfarlane’s list of talents. His eagerly-awaited Is A River Alive? adds another genre-breaking gift of non-fiction writing to his already critically and universally acclaimed treasure trove. Using vivid and breathtaking storytelling, Macfarlane offers a firsthand account of what it is to personally and scrupulously engage with this question, embedded as it is in both indigenous cosmologies and in the rising Rights Of Nature movement. As he points out, the much-vaunted rationalism of Western intellectual frameworks jibs against us embracing animist understandings. Yet, as he brings to life in his vivid prose, the very question Is A River Alive? reprises a very ancient and far more successful understanding of and way of being within the more-than-human natural world - one that offers a bridge between indigenous and mainstream attempts to protect, restore and simply acknowledge the life-sustaining centrality of our riverine eco-systems world-wide. In the course of exploring the very different states and possible fates of three rivers, Macfarlane, with his characteristically generous and collaborative vision, engages movingly – and often humourously - with an extraordinary band of unforgettable river defenders across the globe who are working with these rivers at the very source of the forces arraigned against them. Listen to this extraordinary book and feel all the waters within your own body rising in profound fellowship with your own river kin. On that note, I can lovingly name who my home rivers are here in South Africa – they are the great Crocodile and the great Elephant Rivers, arising in the Eastern highlands south of the great green greasy Limpopo - hello my kin!
Mary Ann Cullinan