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9 absorbing novels with an academic setting

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10 times fiction changed the world

Book, Entangled Life, surrounded by fungi and moss

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What to read if you loved Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

An assortment of Richard Powers' covers on a green background

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Where to start reading Richard Powers’ books

Orfeo

Extraordinary and confounding, mind-spinning and wonderful

Powers is prodigiously talented. besides being fearfully erudite, he writes lyrical prose, has a seductive sense of wonder and is an acute observer of social life

The best novel about classical music ... since Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus

Orfeo has a galloping finale that is sweet, funny, sad and haunting all at once ... A formidably intelligent, ecstatically noisy novel

Extraordinary ... His evocations of music, let alone lost love, simply soar off the page ... Once again, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our finest novelists

Richard Powers has published fourteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 
 
'A virtuoso performance' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Extraordinary and confounding, mind-spinning and wonderful' INDEPENDENT 
 
'A magnificent and moving novel' LOS ANGELES TIMES 
 
Seventy-year-old avant-garde composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab - where he is conducting the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find musical patterns in surprising places - has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. 
 
Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive, earning him the moniker 'Bioterrorist Bach'. He hatches a daring plan to transform this disastrous collision with the security state into an unforgettable work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around it. 
 
A gripping escape narrative filled with lyrical wonder, Orfeo is both a portrait of a creative, obsessive man, and a reflection on finding melodies in everyday life.

The Time of our Singing

An epic novel of modern America that weaves ideas of race, music and science into a mysterious but satisfying tapestry ... Endlessly fascinating

There is no contemporary American writer quite like Richard Powers ... It is rare to find a novel as intellectually and emotionally engaging as this

A great hurtle of a book, telling several powerful stories at once ... Strangely subtle and moving ... an astonishing performance ... Prodigious, illuminating and exhilarating

'There is no contemporary American writer quite like Richard Powers ... It is rare to find a novel as intellectually and emotionally engaging as this' GUARDIAN 
 
'Formidable ... rewarding' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'An astonishing performance' NEW YORK TIMES 
 
Jonah, Ruth, and Joseph are the children of mixed-race parents who aspire to raise them beyond the constraints of time and identity, immersing them in a world of song. However, they cannot shield them from the realities of the outside world forever. 
 
Jonah, a talented young tenor, finds that the opera world remains preoccupied with his race. Ruth, rejecting classical music, disappears instead into a life dedicated to activism and a new relationship. Over the years, Joseph - the middle child, a pianist, and our narrator - struggles not only to stay connected to his siblings but also to carve out a future on his own. 
 
A powerful story of a tragedy of race in America, The Time of Our Singing is an enthralling, harrowing novel about the lives of choices of one family at the crossroads of identity.

Operation Wandering Soul

'If you have children or will have children, if you know children or can remember being a child, dare to read Operation Wandering Soul ... Dense in knowledge, rich in imagination, powerful in expression, [it] is bedtime reading for the future. Like the stories read to children, this intensely caring novel can help prevent the nightmare it describes, children out too late at night, far from home, lost, the wandering souls of the future, our future

Powers' prose soars like the most magnificent of choirs, memorably capturing the moments of joy and anguish, barrenness and grace, that add up to life

Vast and daring ... A fully realised and major work of art

To read [Powers'] work is to be wowed by his verbal muscularity and by his ability to stitch seemingly disparate elements into a larger metaphorical fabric

Richard Powers is the most intellectually stimulating novelist at work in the English language today

In his ambition to define and dissect our culture, Powers is an agile younger brother to Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon

'If you have children or will have children, if you know children or can remember being a child, dare to read Operation Wandering Soul ... it is bedtime reading for the future' USA TODAY 
 
'Powers' prose soars like the most magnificent of choirs' WASHINGTON POST 
 
'The most intellectually stimulating novelist at work in the English language today' DAILY TELEGRAPH 
 
In the paediatrics ward of a public hospital, a group of sick children gather, their lives brightened only by the power of imagination. The surrogate parents of this group - Kraft, a tired, overworked surgical resident, and Espera, a dedicated therapist - are charged with prolonging their lives using storytelling and make-believe alone. 
 
Using the boundless reach of imagination, Operation Wandering Soul is a novel that celebrates the wonder of childhood. Both social indictment and emotional account of intimate needs, it asks how we might keep alive a little longer the enduring magic of childhood dreams.

The Echo Maker

Among his most stunning yet: profound and heartbreaking

A psychological thriller, a flawed love story, a study of authenticity in emotions, a commentary on America's relations with itself and the world, humanity and ecology ... undoubtedly magnificent

An exhilarating narrative feat ... He is a formidable talent, and this is a lucid, fiercely entertaining novel

Powers's most accessible novel ... a novel of richness and complexity, never dry or condescending, always weaving its way towards an unsettling emotional climax

An eloquent style, a strongly localised setting and a wealth of arcane and intricately researched detail ... the novel is full of character, in cast and locale, and it impressively manages to be both meditative and compelling

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory and his most recent novel, Bewilderment, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

‘A psychological thriller, a flawed love story, a study of authenticity in emotions, a commentary on America's relations with itself and the world, humanity and ecology... undoubtedly magnificent’ The Times 
 
On a winter night, Mark Schluter’s truck turns over in a near-fatal accident. His sister, Karin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to look after him. But when he finally awakes from his coma, Mark believes that Karin – who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister – is really an identical impostor. 
 
Shattered by her brother’s behaviour, Karin contacts neuroscientist Dr Gerald Weber. But what Weber discovers in Mark begins to undermine even his own sense of self. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what really happened. The truth of that evening will change the lives of all three beyond recognition.

Gain

Erudite, penetrating and splendidly written ... Dazzling

One can only admire Powers's breadth of vision, his erudition and powers of analysis

'Penetrating and splendidly written... Dazzling' New York Times 
 
In Lacewood, Illinois, Laura Bodey, a divorced mother of two and real estate agent, plunges into a new existence when she learns that she has cancer. 
 
This same small town is home to Clare & Company, a soap manufacturer begun by three brothers in nineteenth-century Boston. Over the course of more than a century, it transforms into a powerful international corporation. 
 
Clare & Company's stunning growth reflects America's kaleidoscopic history, yet for Laura and her family, this wild success has profound and lasting consequences.

Galatea 2.2

An ingenious, ambitious, at times dizzily cerebral work ... It soars and spins ... The novel attains an aching, melancholy beauty

Extraordinary. Entertainment of a very high order ... One of the best books of the year

Powers ... can nail emotional complexities with precision, while using his characters to explore how emerging technologies might shape our lives

An extraordinary and brilliant novel of ideas

A splendid intellectual adventure ... a heartbreaking love story

Dazzling ... A cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling. A lively tour de force

Read this thrilling and timely novel of the human soul from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory. 
 
After many years of living abroad, a young writer returns to the United States to take up a position at his former college. There he encounters Philip Lentz, an outspoken neurologist intent on using computers to model the human brain. 
 
Lentz involves the writer in an outlandish and irresistible project - to train a computing system by reading a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the machine grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own age, sex, race and reason for existing. 
 
'An ingenious, ambitious, at times dizzily cerebral work... It soars and spins... The novel attains an aching, melancholy beauty' New York Times

Richard Powers

A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth. The plot is as labyrinthine as any by Umberto Eco ... Extremely witty ... Dip into this book at random and the chances are it will sit up and bite you like a rattlesnake

The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow ... An outright marvel

The Gold Bug Variations has everything ... Stunning ... Almost every sentence is a heroic tour de force ... The joy to be taken in reading the book is, like the pleasure of studying crystal multiplication, in seeing a pattern swarm mosaically over everything, watching a stencil laid over life

One of the best writers working now

Powers has triumphantly restored ... the philosophical novel

'A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 
 
'Powers has triumphantly restored ... the philosophical novel' OBSERVER 
 
'A heroic tour de force' NEW YORK TIMES 
 
In 1957, brilliant biologist Stuart Ressler sets out to crack the genetic code. Yet his efforts are sidetracked by other, more complex codes - social, moral, musical, and spiritual - as he falls in love with a member of his research team. 
 
Years later, another young man and woman investigate a different mystery: why did the promising Ressler suddenly vanish from the world of science? 
 
Strand by strand, these two love stories intertwine in a double helix of desire in an enthralling tale about new love and the mysteries of science.

Richard Powers

Praise for The Gold Bug Variations

A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth. The plot is as labyrinthine as any by Umberto Eco ... Extremely witty ... Dip into this book at random and the c ...

The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow ... An outright marvel

The Gold Bug Variations has everything ... Stunning ... Almost every sentence is a heroic tour de force ... The joy to be taken in reading the book is, like the pleasure of studying crystal multiplicat ...

A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth. The plot is as labyrinthine as any by Umberto Eco ... Extremely witty ... Dip into this book at random and the c ...

The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow ... An outright marvel

The Gold Bug Variations has everything ... Stunning ... Almost every sentence is a heroic tour de force ... The joy to be taken in reading the book is, like the pleasure of studying crystal multiplicat ...

A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth. The plot is as labyrinthine as any by Umberto Eco ... Extremely witty ... Dip into this book at random and the c ...

The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow ... An outright marvel

The Gold Bug Variations has everything ... Stunning ... Almost every sentence is a heroic tour de force ... The joy to be taken in reading the book is, like the pleasure of studying crystal multiplicat ...

Books by Richard Powers

Articles featuring Richard Powers

Uplifting climate books to inspire hope about the planet’s future

9 absorbing novels with an academic setting

10 times fiction changed the world

What to read if you loved Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

Where to start reading Richard Powers’ books

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