To the River (Olivia Laing)

Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore.

Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.

Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. They're the author of eight books, including Funny Weather, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller The Garden Against Time. Laing's first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. They are a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts and their books have been translated into twenty-one languages. Their latest novel is The Silver Book.

@olivialanguage olivialaing.com