Underland: A Deep Time Journey

National Bestseller • New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year" • NPR "Favorite Books of 2019" • Guardian "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" • Kirkus Reviews "Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far)" • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award

"Mesmerizing…Underland is a portal of light in dark times." ―Terry Tempest Williams, New York Times Book Review

In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time―from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come―Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.

Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.

24 illustrations

Robert Macfarlane’s best-selling books include Underland, The Old Ways, and Mountains of the Mind. With the artist Jackie Morris he is the coauthor of The Lost Words, The Lost Spells, and The Book of Birds. He is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature and the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence and is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.