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Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams
Not yet published
Expected 5 May 26'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.
'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.
304 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication May 5, 2026
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Chiara Barzini
5 books77 followersChiara Barzini is an award-winning Italian screen and fiction writer. She lived and studied in the United States where she covered Lifestyle and Culture stories for numerous American and Italian publications. She writes and translates both in English and Italian and is the author of the short story collection Sister Stop Breathing (Calamari Press, 2012) and the novel Things That Happened Before The Earthquake (Doubleday, 2017) which was a Best Book of the Year for Vogue, Esquire, Elle, Bustle, and the Guardian, and a best summer book for the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, BBC, and Oprah! magazine. Her fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. She has a regular column in D Repubblica and is a Literature Advisor at the American Academy in Rome.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Chiara Barzini speaks of relics. Her latest book, Aqua, is itself its own relic. A mix of memoir and history book renewing my belief in the magic real people can create. Edens out of empty space. The grandeur of human imagination and the eventual ruin the overly ambitious and greedy face. The ruin of empires.
From the preface, which sets the tone and grounds you in the present moment- the LA fires are raging, our government collapsing, how did we get here? Barzini is about to tell us.
There is also an underlying frustration women can never seem to escape strung throughout Aqua- a tale of the Los Angeles Aqueduct from its start in the Owens Valley to the very city in which it empties, that of how to be a mother, a writer, a person. The blame/shame game we are ceaselessly asked to play. She asks of herself how not to feel guilty for the things she wants as she leads us across Rome, New York, Los Angeles.
In the book, juxtaposed to the history of the making of the Aqueduct is the desire to turn her screenplay into a movie. She repeatedly seeks signs in the desert on her journey with a faith that something hopeful is coming despite the intuited sense of doom nipping at her heels. All these very real and relatable desires she splays against the backdrop of a city, a country that perhaps is no longer fit to hold them.
But a love for LA is also within these pages, respect and awe. For nature as it was and returns to despite human intervention and for the humans who have made the city what it is.
My biggest takeaway from the book might be our need for versatility in order for our survival. We cannot control the land. Something the mentioned Cahuillas knew but as we have always done, we push out the indigenous protectors of the land and with them the wisdom of how to survive in it.
Barzini deftly balances information about the building of Mulholland’s Aqueduct, Los Angeles itself, and her personal life in a way that made my heart ache. You can almost see in our history the exact moment it all goes wrong, but foresight and all that…
Furthermore the power of Water and all its symbolism is extremely striking. She nails the irony of cult leaders in the desert. The messiah tropes and granola girls. But she also utters a grave note on how this city is haunted by ghosts. Homes and mansions like sentient beings as they’re destroyed by fire and flood and the ever persistent echo of the Manson murders that changed the city forever.
Even more haunting and aching was her chapter on the Salton Sea, “The largest mistake seen from space.” What have we done? The image of her walking over not sand, but bones and the loss of the artist Shig “it takes a lot of mental balance to want to stay alive when everything around you is dying.” I remembered Lauren Cho. Bombay Beach, depression after Covid, our allergy to our own mortality…the mourning that takes place in the desert, a purification, a training, contemplation. My first trip to Joshua Tree came after my uncle’s passing from cancer. Barzini speaks of the ruins of Bombay Beach, the sewers of Rome how we, “walk over layers of bodies, over homes and tombs.”
Reading Aqua I found the same myth and Mysticism readers of Francesca Lia Block would find in her books (I highly suggest readers of House of Hearts to reach for Aqua next).
Further in the book Chiara speaks of the horrible ways the people in the desert, especially the Cahuilla Indians are being treated and our prison industrial system. Border patrol and the “dreams” we are being “sold” the atomic bomb practices and all the hidden things our country tries to bury.
Deeper in the book the dream of her screenplay becoming a film remains and as a writer myself the thought of: the most interesting thing has already been made whatever could my story add to it? Is hard felt. Your story matters! (Aside from Aqua being a poignant and mesmerizing mirage itself, Barzini’s Things That Happened Before the Earthquake is quintessential California adolescence reading.)
Aqua is also a girl’s road trip book. An adventure with childhood friends who stayed into adulthood and are her pillars throughout this journey. The importance of these female friendships in our lives.
The girls hit up Vegas and all her emptiness: Capitalism at its most failing. Empty stores and empty hearts.
This is still a story about “water diversion and corruption” “solar farms destroying the desert in the name of green energy” and I’m again reminded of yet another trip to Joshua Tree where I did not recognize the now large fields of turbines marring the land.
How do we atone for what we stole from the land?
The chapter on Manzanar and “California’s fucked up history. We have Native land with a Spanish name, diverted water, we have the imprisonment of Japanese people and now we have a national park” America finds ways to celebrate or historicize anything. Why can’t it just be labeled for what it is? A former concentration camp. Not to mention Shinoda’s Stingray Corvette becoming the most recognized as American thing designed by a citizen of this country said country threw in a prison camp.
And yet, “maybe it’s still possible to dream big in a world that’s falling apart.” Chiara helps us believe it is.
“We get greedy when our dreams threaten to slip away. We try to makes things fit even when they don’t. We become proud and overconfident.”
Barzini doesn’t get her movie and Mulholland became a recluse, shrinking away from his city and himself after the tragedy of the San Francisquito Dam collapse. You feel bad almost for the now broken man whose ambition and greed blackened a dream. The people of the Owens Valley sleep with oxygen tanks because the dust is so bad LA needs to divert the water back to where it was stolen just to cover the lake enough to quell the cancerous dust.
This all seems like a tragic anticlimactic end, but when asked, Barzini says she would “do it all again.” There have to be dreams of the future her friend Olivia Laing tells her. Just like the graffiti Chiara finds on her journey says: Soar crash heal repeat.
From the preface, which sets the tone and grounds you in the present moment- the LA fires are raging, our government collapsing, how did we get here? Barzini is about to tell us.
There is also an underlying frustration women can never seem to escape strung throughout Aqua- a tale of the Los Angeles Aqueduct from its start in the Owens Valley to the very city in which it empties, that of how to be a mother, a writer, a person. The blame/shame game we are ceaselessly asked to play. She asks of herself how not to feel guilty for the things she wants as she leads us across Rome, New York, Los Angeles.
In the book, juxtaposed to the history of the making of the Aqueduct is the desire to turn her screenplay into a movie. She repeatedly seeks signs in the desert on her journey with a faith that something hopeful is coming despite the intuited sense of doom nipping at her heels. All these very real and relatable desires she splays against the backdrop of a city, a country that perhaps is no longer fit to hold them.
But a love for LA is also within these pages, respect and awe. For nature as it was and returns to despite human intervention and for the humans who have made the city what it is.
My biggest takeaway from the book might be our need for versatility in order for our survival. We cannot control the land. Something the mentioned Cahuillas knew but as we have always done, we push out the indigenous protectors of the land and with them the wisdom of how to survive in it.
Barzini deftly balances information about the building of Mulholland’s Aqueduct, Los Angeles itself, and her personal life in a way that made my heart ache. You can almost see in our history the exact moment it all goes wrong, but foresight and all that…
Furthermore the power of Water and all its symbolism is extremely striking. She nails the irony of cult leaders in the desert. The messiah tropes and granola girls. But she also utters a grave note on how this city is haunted by ghosts. Homes and mansions like sentient beings as they’re destroyed by fire and flood and the ever persistent echo of the Manson murders that changed the city forever.
Even more haunting and aching was her chapter on the Salton Sea, “The largest mistake seen from space.” What have we done? The image of her walking over not sand, but bones and the loss of the artist Shig “it takes a lot of mental balance to want to stay alive when everything around you is dying.” I remembered Lauren Cho. Bombay Beach, depression after Covid, our allergy to our own mortality…the mourning that takes place in the desert, a purification, a training, contemplation. My first trip to Joshua Tree came after my uncle’s passing from cancer. Barzini speaks of the ruins of Bombay Beach, the sewers of Rome how we, “walk over layers of bodies, over homes and tombs.”
Reading Aqua I found the same myth and Mysticism readers of Francesca Lia Block would find in her books (I highly suggest readers of House of Hearts to reach for Aqua next).
Further in the book Chiara speaks of the horrible ways the people in the desert, especially the Cahuilla Indians are being treated and our prison industrial system. Border patrol and the “dreams” we are being “sold” the atomic bomb practices and all the hidden things our country tries to bury.
Deeper in the book the dream of her screenplay becoming a film remains and as a writer myself the thought of: the most interesting thing has already been made whatever could my story add to it? Is hard felt. Your story matters! (Aside from Aqua being a poignant and mesmerizing mirage itself, Barzini’s Things That Happened Before the Earthquake is quintessential California adolescence reading.)
Aqua is also a girl’s road trip book. An adventure with childhood friends who stayed into adulthood and are her pillars throughout this journey. The importance of these female friendships in our lives.
The girls hit up Vegas and all her emptiness: Capitalism at its most failing. Empty stores and empty hearts.
This is still a story about “water diversion and corruption” “solar farms destroying the desert in the name of green energy” and I’m again reminded of yet another trip to Joshua Tree where I did not recognize the now large fields of turbines marring the land.
How do we atone for what we stole from the land?
The chapter on Manzanar and “California’s fucked up history. We have Native land with a Spanish name, diverted water, we have the imprisonment of Japanese people and now we have a national park” America finds ways to celebrate or historicize anything. Why can’t it just be labeled for what it is? A former concentration camp. Not to mention Shinoda’s Stingray Corvette becoming the most recognized as American thing designed by a citizen of this country said country threw in a prison camp.
And yet, “maybe it’s still possible to dream big in a world that’s falling apart.” Chiara helps us believe it is.
“We get greedy when our dreams threaten to slip away. We try to makes things fit even when they don’t. We become proud and overconfident.”
Barzini doesn’t get her movie and Mulholland became a recluse, shrinking away from his city and himself after the tragedy of the San Francisquito Dam collapse. You feel bad almost for the now broken man whose ambition and greed blackened a dream. The people of the Owens Valley sleep with oxygen tanks because the dust is so bad LA needs to divert the water back to where it was stolen just to cover the lake enough to quell the cancerous dust.
This all seems like a tragic anticlimactic end, but when asked, Barzini says she would “do it all again.” There have to be dreams of the future her friend Olivia Laing tells her. Just like the graffiti Chiara finds on her journey says: Soar crash heal repeat.
November 30, 2025
This is a fascinating read. I felt like I was on an adventure throughout and discovered the incredible power of water and its story in Los Angeles. Would definitely recommend!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews