Richard Powers brings to life the death of the world’s oceans in ‘Playground’

Big Books & Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller

In his 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, “The Overstory,” Richard Powers imagines a world where only a few acres of virgin forest remain on the continent. A group of strangers band together to protect those few remaining trees, and in the process, discover the trees are communicating with each other.

Powers’ new novel, “Playground,” turns the same eye to the planet’s oceans. As he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, his hope is that the power of storytelling will animate humans to behold the sea with fresh wonder — and act to preserve it before it’s too late.

“These last three novels of mine are attempts to find ways of telling stories that challenge that separateness or sense of entitlement,” he says, “that sense that we are the essential and perhaps the only interesting game in town and that everything else is a resource for our project.”

Guest:


  • Richard Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including “The Overstory,” “Bewilderment” and “Orfeo.” His new book is “Playground.”





Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsRSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

若要收聽兒少不宜的單集,請登入帳號。

隨時掌握此節目最新消息

登入或註冊後,即可追蹤節目、儲存單集和掌握最新資訊。

選取國家或地區

非洲、中東和印度

亞太地區

歐洲

拉丁美洲與加勒比海地區

美國與加拿大