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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowBewilderment
A novel
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator
Edoardo Ballerini
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
7 hours 50 minutes
Language
English
OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Overstory.
Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by New York, Chicago Tribune, BookPage, Literary Hub, The Millions, New Statesmen and Times of London
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while singlehandedly raising his unusual nine-year-old son, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures of the endangered animals he loves. He is also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face.
What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his troubled son 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?
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing visions 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, imperilled planet?
RICHARD POWERS is the author of twelve novels. His most recent, The Overstory, won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the 2020 American Academy of Arts and Letters' William Dean Howells Medal for the most distinguished American work of fiction published in the last five years, and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. The Overstory has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 63 weeks to date, with more than one million copies in print across all formats. Powers is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, among other accolades.
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Reviews
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
A HEATHER'S PICK
ONE OF INDIGO'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2021
“In Bewilderment [Powers’] mastery strikes a new vein . . . glittering with timeless story elements; it raises goosebumps and breaks our hearts. . . . The author’s shortest work and his most far-seeing. . . . Richard Powers has brought off something more than [the second of] two exemplary and superb fictions of the climate crisis. He’s also unearthed and refurbished the timeless link between artist and shaman, a voice crying in the wilderness.” —The Brooklyn Rail
“Soaring descriptions and forthright observations about our planet and the life it supports. . . . [Bewilderment] offers rich commentary on the complex, often mystifying intersections between science, popular culture, and politics. . . . As the bestselling The Overstory continues to reverberate, readers will be excited to turn to another deeply involving Powers novel.” —Booklist (starred review)
“[A] taut ecological parable. . . . A touching novel that offers a vital message with uncommon sympathy and intelligence.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[A] deeply moving and brilliantly original novel.” —2021 Booker Prize Jury
“With the moving relationship between father and son, [Bewilderment] is an emotional and poignant read, replete with striking visuals of a devastated world.” —The National
“Marvelous. . . . Powers transforms the wrenching story into something sublime. . . . The work of a master.” —Publishers Weekly
“[A] profound novel. . . . [Powers’] capacity for world-envisioning offers rapt readers moment after moment of captivating recalibration.” —The New York Times
“Powers’ unchained imagination stretches its empathy circle from lichen to nebulae, in finely crafted prose.” —Financial Times (UK)
“Among the novel’s many virtues is the mood it radiates of sheer cosmic awe. . . . 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. . . . Sorrowing awe is Bewilderment’s primary tone, and its many remarkable scenes are controlled with high novelistic intelligence.” —The Guardian
“Few writers capture nature's glories quite so vibrantly.” —NPR
“This is a must-read novel.” —The Associated Press
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