Playground
Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize
A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.
Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
Praise for Playground
“A characterful, capacious and engaging novel, distilling subjects as diverse as oceanography, climate change, the legacies of colonialism and the arc of a lifelong friendship into an exhilaratingly entangled narrative in which Powers’ unparalleled gifts for revealing the magic and mystery of the natural world are on full display.”
—The 2024 Booker Prize Judges
“Vivid and ambitious…a love letter to the natural world.…Playground is ravishing in its descriptions of an underwater universe as fragile as it is ancient and unyielding.”
—Taylor Antrim, Vogue, Best Books of 2024 So Far
“Compelling, with fine writing on friendship and its loss and on the awe and delight the ocean inspires.…An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“An epic drama of AI, neocolonialism, and oceanography…dazzling.…[T]he elegance of [Powers’s] prose, the scope of his ambition, and the exacting reverence with which he writes about the imperiled world serve as reminders of why he ranks among America’s foremost novelists.…Readers will be awed.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A novel of spectacular thematic scope and surreal drama…The author’s genius shows in his formidable descriptive talents and the graceful clarity of his densely woven plot…Powers meticulously sets the stage with vivid, immersive details to ignite the readers imagination.”
—Shahina Piyarali, Shelf Awareness
“Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep, and alive.”
—Percival Everett
“An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways―gripping, alarming, and uplifting.”
—Emma Donoghue
“Powers is a master of taking important topics of our times―from threats to our oceans and climate change to AI―and turning them into riveting and fiercely relevant books imbued with psychological insight and a deep awe for nature. This eloquent dance of the scientific and emotional makes him one of our finest storytellers. Playground is brilliant, captivating, and important―and the best book I’ve read this year.”
—Andrea Wulf
The Overstory
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize • #1 New York Times Bestseller
“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…accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt…[A] gigantic fable of genuine truths.” —Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times Book Review, cover review
“This ambitious novel soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction…[R]emarkable.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post
Bewilderment
An Oprah’s Book Club Selection • An Instant New York Times Bestseller
“Extraordinary…Powers’s insightful, often poetic prose draws us at once more deeply toward the infinitude of the imagination and more vigorously toward the urgencies of the real and familiar stakes rattling our persons and our planet.” ―Tracy K. Smith, New York Times Book Review, cover review
“A heartrending tale of loss…Powers continues to raise bold questions about the state of our world and the cumulative effects of our mistakes.” ―Heller McAlpin, NPR
“Nothing short of transportive…Powers expertly grapples with existential questions, interspersing beatific rays of hope throughout the story like sunbeams.” —Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek