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The Overstory

Richard Powers author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:11th Apr '19

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The Overstory cover

Moving through America's history and its landscape, this is a wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe.

*THE MILLION-COPY GLOBAL BESTSELLER
*WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION*

A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe.

'It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it' Barack Obama

An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. An Air Force crewmember in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan.

This is the story of these and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, who are brought together in a last stand to save it from catastrophe.

'It's not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book' Margaret Atwood

'Really, just one of the best novels, period' Ann Patchett

'Radical and exciting' Jessie Burton

'Breath-taking' Barbara Kingsolver

A novel about the natural world - trees specifically - and our power as human beings to destroy it or redeem it. It reminds me that we are all connected and that there is still time to make things right -- TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage
An extraordinary novel... It's an astonishing performance... The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference * Guardian *
Should be mandatory reading the world over -- EMILIA CLARKE
On almost every page of The Overstory you will find sentences that combine precision and vision. You will learn new facts about trees... [An] exhilarating read * The Times *
One of the most thoughtful and involving novels I've read for years... Extraordinary * Daily Telegraph *
Absolutely blown away by this epic, heartbreaking novel about us and trees -- EMMA DONOGHUE, author of Room and The Pull of the Stars
[A] majestic redwood of a novel... Combines the multi-narrative approach of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas with a paean to the grandeur and wonder of trees... It is fitting that it ends with a message of hope * Observer *
A rare specimen: a Great American Eco-Novel... It will change the way you look at trees * Financial Times *
Autumn makes me think of leaves, which makes me think of trees, which makes me think of The Overstory, the best novel ever written about trees, and really, just one of the best novels, period.
[The Overstory is] the best book I’ve read in ten years. It’s a remarkable piece of literature, and the moment it speaks to is climate change. So, for me, it’s a lodestone. It’s a mind-opening fiction, and it connects us all in a very positive way to the things that we have to do if we want to regain our planet. We’ve got lots and lots of trees where we live in Scotland. If I’m feeling unwell or unsettled in any way, I always go and sit with a tree or walk through the trees, and that’s incredibly healing and helpful -- Emma Thompson * New York Times *

  • Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 (UK)

ISBN: 9781784708245

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 33mm

Weight: 461g

640 pages