The Search for Water

Virginia Mendoza's first memories are of drought. She grew up in La Mancha, Spain, the driest region in Europe. Her parents, grandparents, and almost every word, tool, and tradition of her homeland conveyed one conviction: without water, there is no life; without water, there is no civilization. In The Search for Water, Mendoza weaves this personal reflection together with a dazzling scientific and anthropological enquiry into the ways the search for water has shaped the story of humanity. From flows of migration, agriculture and pagan rain gods to contemporary struggles with drought and climate change, Mendoza writes a gripping and inventive history of humankind as driven and united by one force: thirst.

Virginia Mendoza studied Journalism and Social and Cultural Anthropology. She works as a freelance journalist and has written for various media in Spain and Latin America, and she has published books on rootedness and uprooting in which she fuses narrative journalism and rural anthropology. The Search for Water, a hybrid of essay, historical anthropology and memoir, is currently being translated into three languages. Thomas Bunstead was born in London in 1982 and lives in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. He has translated leading Spanish-language writers, including Maria Gainza and Enrique Vila-Matas, and won various awards, including an O. Henry Prize and the 2024 Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation.