"A joy to read" Times Literary Supplement
"[A] stirring and accessible history of the mighty Rhine" Irish Times
"It's easy to be swept away by Deen's delightful prose" New Statesman
"A beautiful book, by turns poetic, witty and full of learning . . . This unique biography of a river marks a new kind of writing about people and place, both in and out of time" PATRICK McGUINNESS
The Boundless River takes the reader into a unique world - the twilight zone between fact and fiction, science and imagination - and on a journey which moves effortlessly from a time in prehistory, long before the existence of a European continent, to the present day. Along the way Deen encounters paleontologists, geologists, museum curators, taxidermists, fishermen and skippers who work the boats, who still see the Rhine as a living entity.
From the mighty hippos that swam in its waters millions of years ago, to the weary salmon that saw their habitat slowly change and the aurochs that grazed its shores; from the primordial Steinheim Woman to the Roman general Corbulo who commanded settlements along its delta, to a young Goethe: in all of their stories the Rhine is ever present, sometimes as the main character, sometimes as an extra, as a theatre of war, a border between nations, a bathing spot, a killer, a vital transport route.
Beautifully fluid, rich and captivating, The Boundless River shows how the Rhine connects and divides, terrifies, comforts, carries and swallows, and has done since the beginning of time.
Translated from the Dutch by Jane Hedley-Prôle and Jonathan Reeder
In The Boundless River, Mathijs Deen takes the reader into his unique world: the twilight zone between fact and fiction, science and imagination. "If the river is a character, then it must have a birth and a death. Tell me how it came about." Mathijs Deen asks his table companion, a geologist, on a sunny September day.
The answer that follows is the beginning of a journey that takes the reader from a time long before we spoke of a European continent to the present day, when skippers still see the Rhine as a living being.
From the mighty hippos that grazed the banks millions of years ago to the weary salmon that saw its habitat slowly change, from the primordial girl of Steinheim to the Roman general Corbulo, the young Goethe and the North Sea fisherman Kommer Tanis: Deen tells their stories, in which the Rhine is always present, sometimes as the main character, sometimes as an extra. He shows how the river connects and divides, terrifies, comforts, carries and swallows, since the beginning of time.
Translated by Jane Hedley Prole and Jonathan Reeder
