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How I Became a Tree Audiobook
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Publisher Description
An exquisite, lovingly crafted meditation on plants, trees, and our place in the natural world, in the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
“I was tired of speed. I wanted to live tree time.” So writes Sumana Roy at the start of How I Became a Tree, her captivating, adventurous, and self-reflective vision of what it means to be human in the natural world.
Drawn to trees’ wisdom, their nonviolent way of being, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, Roy movingly explores the lessons that writers, painters, photographers, scientists, and spiritual figures have gleaned through their engagement with trees—from Rabindranath Tagore to Tomas Tranströmer, Ovid to Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood. Her stunning meditations on forests, plant life, time, self, and the exhaustion of being human evoke the spacious, relaxed rhythms of the trees themselves.
Hailed upon its original publication in India as “a love song to plants and trees” and “an ode to all that is unnoticed, ill, neglected, and yet resilient,” How I Became a Tree blends literary history, theology, philosophy, botany, and more, and ultimately prompts readers to slow down and to imagine a reenchanted world in which humans live more like trees.
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“This is one of the most original, delightful, inspiring books I have read in a long time. It will enchant and move the reader with its unique imaginative mindset, its humorous touches, and its defiance of convention.”
— Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University
Quotes
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“Roy weaves together science, nature, personal narrative, literature, sociology, and more to keep the reader turning pages—and to turn us all into tree-lovers.”
— The Rumpus -
“Not just a meditation on trees but also an exploration of how they have functioned in literary history, theology, and this world of ours.”
— Literary Hub -
“Soneela Nankani has the perfect soothing voice for this meditation… Through her tone, pitch, and style, Nankani embodies the ruminative and centering aim of the audiobook…A welcome listen.”
— AudioFile -
“An ode to all that is unnoticed, ill, neglected, and yet resilient…Roy’s true spiritual ancestor…is Annie Dillard.”
— The Wire India -
“A book like a jungle: from the wide sky to sticky leaves and unsightly thorns, everything is included.”
— Deutschlandfunk Kultur (Berlin) -
“A radiant and wondrous book.”
— Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways -
“A poetic, probing meditation…a fresh and surprising look at a topic as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, or to put it another way, almost as old as the oldest living trees.”
— Robert Moor, author of On Trails
Awards
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A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Season
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About Sumana Roy
Sumana Roy is associate professor of English and creative writing at Ashoka University in Haryana, India. She is the author of Missing: A Novel, Out of Syllabus: Poems, and My Mother’s Lover and Other Stories.
About Soneela Nankani
Soneela Nankani is an award-winning narrator with over three hundred titles in many different genres including Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi, and Nonfiction. She has garnered sixteen Earphones Awards, nominations for Audie and SOVAS awards, and was recently awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Voice Lifetime Achievement Honor. Her audiobooks have been featured in Best Audiobooks lists by AudioFile magazine and the Washington Post, among others. In her spare time, she loves to read (yes, really), learn languages, try new recipes, and travel. She lives in the DC area with her husband and two mischievous daughters.