Overview

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, a thrilling and timely novel of the human soul 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

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9781784709716

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Reviews

Extraordinary. Entertainment of a very high order... One of the best books of the year * GQ * Dazzling... A cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling. A lively tour de force * New York Times * Powers...can nail emotional complexities with precision, while using his characters to explore how emerging technologies might shape our lives * Daily Telegraph * It's not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book... If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century, which writer would he be? He'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big -- Margaret Atwood * New York Review of Books * An extraordinary and brilliant novel of ideas * Time Out *

An extraordinary and brilliant novel of ideas * Time Out * It's not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book... If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century, which writer would he be? He'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big -- Margaret Atwood * New York Review of Books * Powers...can nail emotional complexities with precision, while using his characters to explore how emerging technologies might shape our lives * Daily Telegraph * Dazzling... A cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling. A lively tour de force * New York Times * Extraordinary. Entertainment of a very high order... One of the best books of the year * GQ *

It's not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book... If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century, which writer would he be? He'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big -- Margaret Atwood * New York Review of Books * Powers...can nail emotional complexities with precision, while using his characters to explore how emerging technologies might shape our lives * Daily Telegraph * Dazzling... A cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling. A lively tour de force * New York Times * An extraordinary and brilliant novel of ideas * Time Out * Tense and heartbreaking * Los Angeles Times *

Author Information

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.

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