'Water is life. Robert Macfarlane, in the marvellous catalogue – which also features writings by Elif Shafak, Rebecca Solnit and Ocean Vuong, among many others – proposes that the term “Anthropocene” is scarcely sufficient to describe our epoch (or any other). “Hydrocene” is his word.' - Observer

'Water is life. Robert Macfarlane, in the marvellous catalogue – which also features writings by Elif Shafak, Rebecca Solnit and Ocean Vuong, among many others – proposes that the term “Anthropocene” is scarcely sufficient to describe our epoch (or any other). “Hydrocene” is his word.' - Observer

An urgent, evocative collection of writings celebrating the source of all life: freshwater, our most precious resource.

Dive into the depths of a Berlin lake, journey from the Thames to the banks of the Nile, and meet Black Mary, the keeper of a lost seventeenth-century healing well in London.

Robin Wall Kimmerer observes a raindrop fall on a carpet of dry moss and asks what we can learn about community, resilience and living small from mosses, one of the earth’s oldest plants. Lucy Jones steps her way through nettles and willowherb to listen to the running river water near her home, cooling the heat of a busy mind. And Vandana Shiva campaigns for water justice – reminding us that we are all participants in the Earth’s water cycle.

Featuring twenty-one writers, including Elif Shafak, Jessica J. Lee and Ocean Vuong, this is a treasury of writings on hope for ecological abundance, desire, beauty – and restorative planetary justice.

These are the vital myths and memories that flow through water.