True Nature

'Magnificent' ROBERT MACFARLANE
'Fascinating' KATHERINE MAY

Discover the many lives of Peter Matthiessen – writer, naturalist, activist, CIA agent, Zen master – in this kaleidoscopic biography of an American literary giant.

Author of The Snow Leopard, co-founder of the Paris Review and the only writer to have ever won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen was a towering figure of twentieth-century American literary culture. He was also, briefly, an undercover agent for the fledgling CIA; an environmental activist; an advocate for Native American rights and California farmworkers; friends with the likes of Truman Capote and William Styron; and a daring explorer who visited every continent on Earth, scaling the Himalayas and floating through the Amazon on a balsawood raft.

Across these many lives, Matthiessen was always searching for what he called his ‘true nature’ – an enlightened state of being, without ego – and this spiritual quest ultimately led him, even as he inflicted great pain on three wives and multiple children, to the highest ranks of Zen.

Readers and critics have struggled to reconcile Matthiessen’s extraordinarily varied achievements and literary output, which included everything from experimental novels to advocacy journalism. Now, for the first time, drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, acclaimed biographer Lance Richardson pulls together the seemingly disparate threads of Matthiessen’s story. With page-turning immediacy, Richardson illuminates how the writer’s uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism and labour exploitation – to express, eloquently and presciently, that ‘in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge’.

'Generous and sensitive' ELIZABETH KOLBERT, author of The Sixth Extinction
'I can't imagine that a fairer, better researched, more elegant biography will come out this year' BENJAMIN MOSER, author of Sontag
'A true masterpiece' HEATHER CLARK, author of Red Comet
'Comprehensive, deeply researched and lucidly written' ADAM SISMAN, author of The Secret Life of John Le Carre