Playground

Powers is a master of taking important topics of our times – from threats to our oceans and climate change to AI – and turning them into riveting and fiercely relevant books imbued with psychological insight and a deep awe for nature. This eloquent dance of the scientific and emotional makes him one of our finest story tellers. PLAYGROUND is brilliant, captivating and important

Andrea Wulf

Along with its environmental warnings, the book carries an intriguing look at the ways people and animals play, as in the boys’ competitive chess, the antics of manta rays, the allure of computer games, and what a meta-minded author might do with his readers. An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.

Kirkus starred review

Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep and alive

Percival Everett

An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways - gripping, alarming and uplifting

Emma Donoghue

This ambitious, rapturous Booker-longlisted epic explores life underwater, generative AI, climate crisis and the power of play

Guardian

Playground ... isn't merely a great American novel, but a magnificent one

i Newspaper

Magisterial, moving and thought-provoking ... a beautiful love letter to our oceans

New Scientist

A work of imaginative skill that opens doors into an undersea future where human exceptionalism isn't taken for granted, and finds hope where other writers, and thinkers, would dwell in despair

The Daily Telegraph

A compelling, eloquent love letter to what [Powers] calls this "fading" planet ... There is a lot going on in Playground, with reflections on power, nature and friendship in a book with well-drawn protagonists and graceful prose. It is a story that rewards a slow read for full immersement

Independent

Powerful, mesmerically beautiful

Mail on Sunday

That Powers is an outstanding writer is hardly news. But with Playground, he proves himself a wizard. This novel is one long, clever magic trick'

Observer

It captures the majesty of the deep…The novel transports readers to a world as fascinating as it is forbidding

Economist

With the slowly intertwining stories of four characters who are each pulled into the island's orbit, Powers has spun gold with this novel. The skill with which he conjures the ocean is as though he has spent his entire life under sea, and the way it interrogates technology, ecology and community is erudite yet thoroughly engaging. Its ending, meanwhile, floored me. Playground was long listed for this year's Booker Prize - in any other year, it could easily have won it

Books of 2024, iNews

An epic celebration of marine life and a meditation on progress and AI

Best Fiction of 2024, Guardian

[Richard Powers] is one of our finest storytellers, taking important present-day subjects from environmental issues to AI, and turning them into riveting novels ... a mesmerizing, hugely important tale

Andrea Wolf, Spectator

I loved Richard Powers's newest novel, Playground, which feels extremely relevant and urgent. Set in the US and Makatea, a tiny island in the Pacific, it weaves together the catastrophic warming of the oceans with advances in AI, helping us understand what is rapidly being lost as the climate-compromised future hurtles towards us

Katharine Viner, Guardian