Macfarlane, who won the E.M. Forster Award for Literature in 2017, is primarily known as a nature writer, but it is not a term he is altogether comfortable with, especially regarding “Underland.” “The nature here is rock and ice and time and nuclear waste and human activity,” he said. “So if it is nature writing, then it is a dark kind of nature writing, but I’m quite happy for it not to sit easily in a genre.”In “Underland,” as in his previous books, he insists on experiencing things for himself. Macfarlane grew up in rural Nottinghamshire, but his love of nature and landscape bloomed when his parents began taking the family on walking holidays in Scotland. “That was the country that’s drawn me back and back as a writer and as a walker and a climber,” he said. Together they created “The Lost Words” as a book of poetry or “spells,” with his writing and her illustrations.

Source: New York Times May 28, 2019 15:56 UTC