Ziolkowski, M. 2024. Mega dams in world literature: Literary responses to twentieth-century dam building. University of Wyoming Press. Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-64642-595-2, Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64642-596-9, 228 p., Paperback Price $25.95.
(URL: www.upcolorado.com/university-of-wyoming-press/item/6558-mega-dams-in-world-literature)
François Molle
IRD, France, francois.molle@ird.fr
To cite this review: Molle, F. 2024. Review of “Mega dams in world literature: Literary responses to twentieth-century dam building”, University of Wyoming Press, 2024, by Margaret Ziolkowski, Water Alternatives, https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/boh/item/388-mega
The subject of (mega)dams has been extensively explored in academic literature. When scholars familiar with this body of work encounter Margaret Ziolowski’s recent book, Mega Dams in World Literature: Literary Responses to Twentieth-Century Dam Building, they may initially question what new insights such a volume could offer. They might also find themselves searching their memories for any previous publications by Ziolowski on the topic, perhaps assuming they had overlooked her earlier contributions. In fact, none exist.
Margaret Ziolowski is professor emerita of Russian at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she taught Russian language, literature, and folklore for thirty-three years. As she reveals in the preface, her engagement with dams began during research for her previous book, Rivers in Russian Literature. Captivated by the profound effects of large dams on both people and the environment, she discovered a rich vein of literary works inspired by the social and environmental upheavals caused by these monumental structures.
Though she avoids claiming expertise on mega-dams, Margaret Ziolowski has done her homework, so to say, as this may not be appropriate for an emerita professor. She has read and digested seminal works such as Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard's The social and environmental effects of large dam (1984), Fred Pearce's 'Damned: Rivers, Dams and the Coming World Water Crisis (1992), Patrick McCully's 'Silenced Rivers: the Ecology and Politics of Large Dams' (1996), Ted Scudder's The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with Social, Environmental, Institutional and Political Costs (2005), the World Commission on Dams (2000), to name a few. In parallel, she scouted the world literature for fictional accounts set against the backdrop of mega-dams and curated a collection of works deemed particularly noteworthy.
Despite the enduring rhetoric surrounding the mega-dams epopee—grand declarations, sublime ideals, and the glorification of humanity’s mastery over nature, all underpinned by promises of boundless economic prosperity—it is striking how few fictional works actually examine the realization of these anticipated windfalls. The most optimistic portrayals are largely confined to the 1950s and 1960s, a period explored in Chapter 2, 'The high modernist heyday of mega-dam construction'. Novels from this era typically center on the iconic dams constructed by the United States and the USSR during the Cold War—projects like Hoover, Grand Coulee, Dneprostroi, Bratsk, the Angara River Basin or the Tennessee Valley Authority, which the world was invited to marvel at. These works are steeped in laudatory language, echoing the dams’ promises while also underscoring their political significance within the Cold War context.
Yet the literary landscape shifted decisively in the decades that followed. A host of unanticipated and underestimated challenges emerged, bedevilling—and ultimately undermining—the grand ambitions of human betterment. Over time, these difficulties tarnished the luster of the twentieth century’s hydraulic mission, gradually dismantling its heroic dreams and promises.
Chapter 3 'Displacement and alienation of peoples worldwide' takes us far from the initial glorious promises into displacement, impoverishment, and alienation. Through poignant stories involving poor peasants in Russia, Native American in the US, Nubians in Egypt, scheduled castes in India, or millions of displaced persons in China, the author shows that 'literature has done an excellent job of humanizing the devastation -physical and psychological- large dams often bring', unearthing these collateral damages and hidden costs.
Chapter 4 'Contaminated water, disappearing fish, and deadly sediment' zooms in on environmental consequences, including accumulation of toxic elements or detritus, pollution, eutrophication, carbon emissions, interruption of fish migration, breeding of bilharzia parasites and other water-borne diseases, drowned wildlife, reservoir sedimentation. In one account on the Three Gorges dam, a character observes 'Styrofoam cups, plastic bags, baby diapers and paper wrappers were common flotsam on the water surface. Throw in the raw and invisible sewage. Progress, it seemed, had made a monstrous oriental stew of the Yangtze'.
Chapter 5, 'Dam failures, real, imagined, and ecotage-inspired', delves into a perhaps surprising theme: the literary depiction of the risks, threats, and potential catastrophes associated with large dams—whether caused by engineering failures, terrorism, war, or ecotage. This body of literature imagines a diversity of plots set in the United States, Egypt, Turkey, and China, compelling readers to think the unthinkable: the catastrophic breach or destruction of a dam.
Readers acquainted with the critical literature on mega-dams may find little that is entirely new in these accounts. However, the narratives examined in this book resonate on a deeply human level, grounding abstract knowledge in vivid, emotional reality. Fiction’s unique power lies in its ability to humanize the consequences of large dams, moving beyond statistics, technical reports, and sanitized language to reveal embodied devastation and heart-wrenching destinies.
One may wonder, out of curiosity, whether the author’s focus on English and Russian sources—an inevitable filter in selecting the works analyzed—has limited the diversity of perspectives, approaches, and sensibilities represented in the book. A brief search reveals a few more accounts, such as Maryse Condé’s Le Barrage (in French), which explores the consequences of dam construction in Africa, or Agathe Portail’s Les Âmes Torrentielles on Patagonia. But, surprisingly, Latin American dams appear to have been addressed primarily through documentaries, films, or surveys rather than fiction.
Another question arises: Does the darker side of dams simply offer a more compelling backdrop for fictional narratives than their putative benefits? It is striking that the positive legacies of large dams—such as water and electricity supply or flood control—have become so naturalized as to fade from public consciousness, while their social and environmental costs are periodically thrust into the spotlight by specific events or news headlines.
On the whole, Margaret Ziolowski guides readers on an engaging scholarly journey through the fictional literature on dams. Her book vividly humanizes their adverse effects and, by doing so, reactivate a persistent question: Why do these consequences continue to be overlooked or dismissed?
