Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason's response is a 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 an iceberg 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 personal and globally-minded: a travel story, a world history, and a desperate plea to live in harmony with future generations.
In On Time and Water—part memoir, part interview, part impassioned treatise on the future of our planet—Andri Snær Magnason follows the young Swedish activist [Greta Thunberg's] example, casting aside convention and delving into the emotional side of the climate crisis. In doing so, he embarks on a deeply humane and vulnerable exploration of what manmade climate change truly means for the planet—and for us ... compelling hybrid ... In a way, On Time and Water could read as a protest—an act of defiance against the emotionally barren landscape of climate rhetoric ... Read this unforgettable book to understand the enormity of the task ahead of us, and to have your mind—and heart—irrevocably changed.
So what does a wordsmith do when challenged by one of the world’s leading climate-emergency scientists, one asking for the biggest story in the history of mankind to be heard and retold as only a poet can tell it, to help stave off the final destruction of the planet’s ecosystem and the demise of the human species? In his fine work On Time and Water, Andri Snær Magnason describes such an encounter: with Professor Wolfgang Lucht from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research. And this book is his response. On Time and Water describes its maker’s search for stories and ideas to help bring us back from the brink ... It is a book rich in stories and ideas ... It is all well wrought together in the flowing conversational style we have come to expect from Magnason’s works.
Icelandic writer Magnason (Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation) provides a literary look at the threat of climate change in this moving account ... Magnason’s empathetic rendering [...] makes an impact. Climate-concerned readers will find much to consider.
