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  • Published: 1 February 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241986370
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Ness




Hauntingly beautiful Anthropocene fable from the bestselling author of Underland and The Lost Words

What happens when the land comes to life?

Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a concrete-and-iron structure called The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a black mass. He plans to detonate a thermonuclear missile. But something is coming to stop him.

Five more-than-human figures - or forms, or forces - are traversing the landscape, moving steadily towards a point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness is the land awakened. Ness is lichen skin and willow-bones, condensing mist and tidal drift. Ness has hagstones for eyes and Ness speaks only in birds. And Ness has come to take this island back.

  • Published: 1 February 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241986370
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the authors

Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, and The Lost Words, co-created with Jackie Morris. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award and the Somerset Maugham Award and The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award. Both books have been adapted for television by the BBC. The Lost Words won the Books Are My Bag Beautiful Book Award and the Hay Festival Book of the Year. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.

Praise for Ness

Ness goes beyond what we expect books to do. Beyond poetry, beyond the word, beyond the bomb - it is an aftertime song. It is dark, ever so dark, nimble and lethal. It is a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age. Ness is something else, and feels like it always has been.

Max Porter