Bewilderment: A Novel

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?