Paperback
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
By Annie Proulx
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 See
Fens, 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
”'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