Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804952177
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

  • Richard Powers
Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Dec 2025
EBook
21 Aug 2025
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The first novel from the Pultizer Prize-winning author of The Overstory and Bewilderment

'An outstanding novel' Observer

'A writer of blistering intellect' Los Angeles Times

'Unexpected and richly imaginative' London Review of Books

'A first novel of intricate merit ... A rich imagination glitters throughout' Mail on Sunday

In the spring of 1914, German photographer August Sander captures a haunting image: three young men on their way to a country dance, themselves unknowingly on the brink of the First World War. This photograph becomes the focal point of Richard Powers’ compelling debut novel.

The fate of the three farmers is intertwined with two contemporary stories: a museum-goer becomes obsessed with the photograph, and a young writer in Boston discovers he has a personal connection to it. Seamlessly blended together, these three narratives depict a century scarred by savagery and fired by progress.
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804952177
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Praise for Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

An outstanding novel

Observer

A first novel of intricate merit... A rich imagination glitters throughout

Mail on Sunday

Unexpected and richly imaginative ... Full of intellectual descriptions and stylistic diversions

London Review of Books

A writer of blistering intellect ... [Powers is] a novelist of ideas and a novelist of witness, and in both respects, he has few American peers

Los Angeles Times

If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century he'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big

Margaret Atwood
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