Aqua

A BEST BOOK OF 2025 - TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘Outrageously good . . . An unforgettable book’ – OLIVIA LAING

'Reverie and road-trip, Aqua succeeds in turning the Cadillac Desert and Land of Little Rain into something lush and unexpected . . . Chiara Barzini ducts and dives through a wonderful and revelatory journey' - GEOFF DYER

In 1913, William Mulholland finished building the Los Angeles Aqueduct – a 233-mile engineering masterwork transporting water from the Owens Valley, across the desert, to a barren corner of California that would become the home of filmmaking.

Over one hundred years later, award-winning Italian author and filmmaker Chiara Barzini traces the geography of the aqueduct, from its source, across the desert, to the city that it helped into existence, all while reckoning with her personal history with the landscape. From the ‘fake’ waters of the Universal Studios Jaws attraction to Salton Sea – California’s largest lake and ‘the only man-made mistake visible from space’ – Aqua explores how water, and its absence, shaped both a modern landscape and the history of film.

A blend of travel writing, philosophy, cultural history and memoir, Aqua is a hugely entertaining and wide-ranging exploration of water, film, dreams versus reality and an empire on the brink of catastrophe.