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Imprint: William Heinemann
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Published: 21/09/2021
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ISBN: 9781785152634
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Length: 288 Pages
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Dimensions: 240mm x 28mm x 162mm
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Weight: 499g
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RRP: £18.99
Bewilderment
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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021
SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2021
AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB SELECTION
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF SEPTEMBER 2021
THE BRAND NEW NOVEL FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THE OVERSTORY
'Powers has extraordinary gifts as a writer' Guardian
'Impressively precise in its scientific conjectures, Bewilderment is no less rich or wise in its emotionality' Observer
'He composes some of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read. I'm in awe of his talent' Oprah Winfrey
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Theo Byrne is a promising young scientist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son Robin is funny, loving and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from school for smashing his friend's face with a thermos.
What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, all while fostering his son's desperate attempt to save this one.
At the heart of Bewilderment lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
-
Imprint: William Heinemann
-
Published: 21/09/2021
-
ISBN: 9781785152634
-
Length: 288 Pages
-
Dimensions: 240mm x 28mm x 162mm
-
Weight: 499g
-
RRP: £18.99
Reviews
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Mingling ideas about neurodivergence, astrobiology, political radicalisation and environmental collapse... There is no question that Powers is a novelist of considerable, well, powers.... Bewilderment is both touching and finely written
Telegraph
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Reading a Powers novel is like boarding a tour bus when you have a single day to explore an unfamiliar city. Bewilderment, his Booker-longlisted new novel, is a hop-on, hop-off trip around astrobiology, climate breakdown and neuro-feedback therapy... it is impossible to deny the importance of Powers's message
Sunday Times
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Powers is a former computer programmer whose ideas-rich fiction grounds the grandest scientific concepts in everyday experience. For him, environmental crisis means that we must share the pain not just of fellow-humans but other life-forms threatened by our botched stewardship of Earth.... Powers's unchained imagination stretches its empathy circle from lichen to nebulae, in finely crafted prose
Financial Times
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Refreshing, original and moving
Evening Standard
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Powers has the rare gift of being able to deal with big ideas while keeping you interested in the lives and emotions of his characters
Sebastian Faulks
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A heartfelt cry for climate awareness, with fantastical digressions to other planets and a rueful celebration of our own
Guardian
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It's a wonderful story - taut, touching and wholehearted
Psychologies
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Intense and disturbing
Mail on Sunday
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A beautiful and thoughtfully written novel
Good Housekeeping
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Impressively precise in its scientific conjectures, Bewilderment is no less rich or wise in its emotionality.... Bewilderment channels both the cosmic sublime and that of the vast American outdoors, resting confidently in a lineage with Thoreau and Whitman, Dillard and Kerouac. It's also a ghostly and affecting love story... We are into the terrain here of myth, metaphysics and religion. Sorrowing awe is Bewilderment's primary tone, and its many remarkable scenes are controlled with high novelistic intelligence.... Robin is as compelling a fictional creation as I've encountered in some time - fierce, lovable and otherworldly. In dreaming him up, Powers was clearly working out a bold fictive question: what must it be like to father a Greta Thunberg?
Observer
