Fen, Bog and Swamp

from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize

''A subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!'' Bill McKibben ''I learned something new - and found something amazing - on every page'' Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx - whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth - comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth''s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx''s explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada''s Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia''s Great Vasyugan Mire and America''s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest. Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when ''in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.'' Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display. ''Magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats'' Guardian ''Proulx''s sparkling book will open your eyes to humanity''s reckless trashing of wetlands'' Telegraph ''A haunting tribute ... Proulx''s poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read'' Financial Times ...

Autorentext

Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novel The Shipping News, Barkskins and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story 'Brokeback Mountain,' which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. She lives in New Hampshire.

Klappentext

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'Magnificent' Guardian'Remarkable ... A compact classic!' Bill McKibben'I learned something new - and found something amazing - on every page' Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot SeeFens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth's most desirable and dependable resources. Here, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment, and their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit. Travelling from the fens of sixteenth-century England to America's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Fen, Bog and Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation, from one of our greatest prose stylists.

'A rousing call to action' Esquire

'Sparklingly furious ... it has a profoundly positive message' Richard Mabey, Telegraph

'This haunting tribute ... is a pleasure to read' Financial Times

Zusammenfassung

'Proulx wants us to see the loss of wetlands - and to appreciate the beauty in these swampy and often stinking places. Boy, does she succeed. The prose is just magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats' Guardian

'Proulx's book is truly peat-ish: layered, learned, feisty, wildly discursive, and most certainly "undulating, dreaming [and] philosophising"' Richard Mabey, Telegraph

'A haunting tribute to the world's peatlands ... Proulx's poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read' Financial Times

'This sobering history of our world's rich wetlands explains the chilling ecological consequences of their destruction' New York Times Book Review

'An enchanting work of nature writing' Esquire

'Delves into the history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis ... Proulx uses nimble prose to knit together scientific facts, personal experiences, and literary references while deciphering the nomenclature of these three subtly diverse wetlands which collectively hold the key to human history' Vogue

'A fierce declaration of peat's importance to climate stability and human survival ' New York Review of Books

'[Proulx's] astute and impassioned examinations of all kinds of wetlands ... show a new side of the novelist we thought we knew' Los Angeles Times

'So often feared, dredged and drained, swamps, bogs and fens (it turns out) are just as vital to our species' survival on this planet as healthy forests and oceans - perhaps more so. Proulx has written a moving elegy and cri de coeur for our world's wetlands' Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See

'Annie Proulx is, as ever, remarkable - her mind, her heart and her learning take us on an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present' Bill McKibben