Description
Coming March 2021
Asked by a leading climate scientist why he wasn’t writing about the greatest crisis mankind has faced, Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland’s most beloved writers and public intellectuals, protested: he wasn’t a specialist, he said. It wasn’t his field. But the scientist persisted: “If you cannot understand our scientific findings and present them in an emotional, psychological, poetic or mythological context,” he told him, “then no one will really understand the issue, and the world will end.”
Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason’s resulting response is a rich and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that illustrates the reality of climate change and offers hope in the face of an uncertain future. Moving from reflections on how one writes an obituary for a glacier to exhortation for a heightened understanding of human time and our obligations to one another, throughout history and across the globe, On Time and Water is both deeply personal and globally minded: a travel story, a world history, a desperate plea to live in harmony with future generations—and is unlike anything that has yet been published on the current climate emergency.
Praise for On Time and Water
“Andri Snær Magnason’s perspective on his country’s environment is unique and compelling … The author tries to understand, and tries to make the reader understand, why the climate crisis is not widely perceived as a distinct, transformative event in the manner of, say, the fall of the Berlin Wall or the attacks of September 11th, 2001. The fundamental problem, as this book elucidates, is time. Climate change is a disaster in slow motion, and yet ‘slow’ is a great deal faster than many people seem able to comprehend.”—The Economist
“Andri Snær Magnason combines intimate history and collective mythology, personal essay and exploration of memory, geography and environment, to bring the elusive reality of climate change painfully and dangerously close to each of us.”—Paolo Giordano, author of Heaven and Earth
“With poetry and wonder Magnason summons deep emotions about our place on our planet. I was deeply moved and inspired by his words.”—Darren Aronofsky
Praise for Andri Snaer Magnason
“Eco-lit needs more attention, and devotees will be pleased to discover a new addition from the Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, who writes with a Seussian mix of wonder, wit and gravitas. … immensely satisfying.”—New York Times
“The love child of Chomsky and Lewis Carroll.”—Rebecca Solnit
“Magnason has created an intimate epic that floats effortlessly between genres as diverse as fairy tale and political commentary, science fiction and social realism. The Casket of Time spans the chasm between ‘once upon a time’ and ‘have you heard the news today’ in a way that makes his philosophical fable feel both timely and timeless.”—Bjarke Ingels
