Mountains Of The Mind | Granta

  • Published: 04/05/2023
  • ISBN: 9781783786794
  • Granta Books
  • 320 pages

Mountains Of The Mind

Robert Macfarlane

WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD

Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride.

In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world’s highest places.

A truly inspiring read

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

A marvellous, distinguished book that jolted my heart ... It simply fizzes with insights into the sublime madness of mountaineering

Roger Deakin

A gripping history of man's irresistible and sometimes fatal attraction to big hills

Sunday Times

The Author

Robert Macfarlane was born in Nottinghamshire in 1976. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways and Landmarks. Mountains of the Mind won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The Wild Places won the Boardman-Tasker Award and the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Non-fiction Award. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and writes on environmentalism, literature and travel for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New York Times.

More about the author →

From the Same Author

The Wild Places

Robert Macfarlane

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness?

In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.

Robert Macfarlane on Granta.com

In Conversation | The Online Edition

In Conversation

Robert Macfarlane & Adam Scovell

‘Travelling into the Ness for the first time was exactly like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker

Robert Macfarlane in conversation with Adam Scovell.

Essays & Memoir | Granta 138

Robert Macfarlane | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Robert Macfarlane

‘The best writers rose to the challenge by seeking not originality of destination, but originality of form.’

Essays & Memoir | Granta 133

Fragments

Roger Deakin & Robert Macfarlane

‘Entering a wood is to enter an element as different as the sea.’