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.
