Bewilderment by Richard Powers is Hay Festival Book of the Month for October, continuing the Festival's campaign to celebrate and ignite conversation around new books that have particular resonance for us right now.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021, Bewilderment is the latest novel from Richard Powers. His last book, The Overstory, was an international sensation, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
It follows the story of Theo Byrne, a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son Robin is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade, for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy 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? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, while all the while fostering his son's desperate campaign to help save this one.
The novelist joins us live online 21 October at 7pm while signed copies are over on our bookshop for sale now.
Hay Festival’s Book of the Month is selected by the festival team in Hay-on-Wye and aims to celebrate great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Titles are sold in the UK through the festival’s online shop, as well as being available in all good libraries and bookshops.
Find out more about Hay Festival’s Book of the Month here or explore #HBOTM on social.