The Overstory

Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

by Richard Powers

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Pub Date 11 Apr 2019 | Archive Date 11 May 2019

Random House UK, Vintage Publishing | Vintage

General Fiction (Adult) | Literary Fiction

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Description

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019

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

‘Really, just one of the best novels, period’ Ann Patchett

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

‘It’s a masterpiece’ Tim Winton

‘Radical and exciting’ Jessie Burton

‘Breathtaking’ Barbara Kingsolver

‘Dazzlingly written’ Robert Macfarlane

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019

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

‘Really, just one of the best novels, period’...

Advance Praise

'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.'
ANN PATCHETT

'An extraordinary novel … It’s an astonishing performance …He’s incredibly good at describing trees, at turning the science into poetry …The book is full of ideas … Like Moby-Dick, The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference … Some of what was happening to his characters passed into my conscience, like alcohol into the bloodstream, and left a feeling behind of grief or guilt, even after I put it down. Which is one test of the quality of a novel.'
GUARDIAN

'The time is ripe for a big novel that tells us as much about trees as Moby-Dick does about whales … The Overstory is that novel and it is very nearly a masterpiece ... The encyclopaedic powers of Powers extend from the sciences to the literary classics. 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.'
TIMES

No less a writer than Margaret Atwood has said of Richard Powers that “it’s not possible for him to write an uninteresting book”. On the evidence of The Overstory, he is continuing a remarkable run … This is a mighty, at times even monolithic, work that combines the multi-narrative approach of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas with a paean to the grandeur and wonder of trees that elegantly sidesteps pretension and overambition. Early comparisons to Moby-Dick are unfairly lofty, but this fine book can stand on its own … Written with a freshness that belies the well-worn subject matter … As befits a book that spans centuries, there is a richness and allusiveness to the prose that reaches back as far as Thoreau’s Walden, and Emerson is an acknowledged touchstone. The Overstory is high-minded but never precious … [A] majestic redwood of a novel … It is fitting that it ends with a message of hope. As with Larkin, a belief that humanity is capable of redeeming itself and beginning “afresh, afresh, afresh”.
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