Galatea 2.2
Richard Powers
  • Published: 27 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804951729
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $22.99

Galatea 2.2

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A brand new edition of the thrilling novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory

Read this thrilling and timely novel of the human soul from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory.

After many years of living abroad, a young writer returns to the United States to take up a position at his former college. There he encounters Philip Lentz, an outspoken neurologist intent on using computers to model the human brain.

Lentz involves the writer in an outlandish and irresistible project - to train a computing system by reading a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the machine grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own age, sex, race and reason for existing.

'An ingenious, ambitious, at times dizzily cerebral work... It soars and spins... The novel attains an aching, melancholy beauty' New York Times
  • Published: 27 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804951729
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His most recent book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

portrait photo of Richard Powers

Also by Richard Powers

Playground
The Overstory
Bewilderment
The Gold Bug Variations
Plowing the Dark
The Echo Maker
The Time of our Singing
See all

Praise for Galatea 2.2

An ingenious, ambitious, at times dizzily cerebral work ... It soars and spins ... The novel attains an aching, melancholy beauty

New York Times

Extraordinary. Entertainment of a very high order ... One of the best books of the year

GQ

Powers ... can nail emotional complexities with precision, while using his characters to explore how emerging technologies might shape our lives

Daily Telegraph

An extraordinary and brilliant novel of ideas

Time Out

Tense and heartbreaking

Los Angeles Times

A splendid intellectual adventure ... a heartbreaking love story

Washington Post

Nothing less than brilliant

John Updike

Dazzling ... A cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling. A lively tour de force

New York Times
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