BOOK REVIEW. ‟THE MUSHROOM AT THE END OF THE WORLD. ON THE POSSIBILITY OF LIFE IN CAPITALIST RUINS”, BY ANNA LOWENHAUPT TSING, PRINCETON AND OXFORD: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015, 331 P.

Abstract

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing recounts in this book the history of the matsutake, an edible mycorrhizal mushroom with high commercial value in Japan. It commonly grows on the floor of pine forests in the Northern Hemisphere. Together with her fellow researchers from the Matsutake Worlds Research Group, the author sought the matsutake around the world visiting, speaking, learning, observing, picking, smelling, getting lost on beds of mycelium in the forests of Oregon (USA), Tamba (Japan), Yunnan (China), and Lapland (Finland). In these exploits, she pieced together the supply chain of the matsutake mushroom which would end up in Japan, served in restaurants or offered as gifts; marvelled at the fitful explosion of mushroom colonies, and the structure of the groups of people living off them; collated the histories of forests in various places, emphasizing their multiple trajectory lines and conjectures; and pondered on the tensions, ambiguities, and forces of lives in common – of humans, and other entities.