The Overstory

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 and WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONAS SEEN ON BBC 2'S BETWEEN THE COVERS'It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it' Barack Obama'Really, just one of the best novels, period' Ann PatchettA wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe. The perfect literary escape.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'Radical and exciting' Jessie Burton'Breathtaking' Barbara Kingsolver

“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 .”

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

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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