Bewilderment: A Novel - Hardcover

Powers, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393881148 ISBN 13: 9780393881141

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021

Synopsis

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB SELECTION
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of 2021
Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction
A Best Book/Best Novel of 2021 at NPR, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Audible, Goodreads, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, Garden & Gun Magazine, and many more

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?

About this title

About the Author

Richard Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including The Overstory, Bewilderment, and Orfeo. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Overstory by Richard Powers

"It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it….It changed how I see things and that’s always, for me, a mark of a book worth reading."
― Barack Obama

"Monumental…A gigantic fable of genuine truths."
― Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review, cover review

"Should be mandatory reading the world over."
― Emilia Clarke

"Extraordinary…What was happening to his characters passed into my conscience, like alcohol into the bloodstream, and left a feeling behind of grief or guilt, even after I put it down."
― Benjamin Markovits, The Guardian

"Transformative and wise."
― Naomi Klein

"Dazzlingly written…Powers is as brilliant on trees and arborescence as he has been in past novels on music, AI, and neuroscience."
― Robert Macfarlane

"The best book I’ve read in ten years…It’s a mind-opening fiction, and it connects us all in a very positive way to the things that we have to do if we want to regain our planet."
― Emma Thompson

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393881148
• ISBN 13: 9780393881141
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288