Operation Wandering Soul: From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of BEWILDERMENT

Description

In the paediatrics ward of a public hospital, a group of sick children is gathering. The surrogate parents of this band - a surgical resident and a therapist - are charged with keeping them alive on storytelling and make-believe. Operation Wandering Soul is a story about imagination and memory. At once a social indictment and an intensely emotional account of intimate need, it asks how we might keep alive a little longer the vanishing narratives of childhood.

Richard Powers has been a recipient of a Lannan Literary award and a MacArthur Fellowship, as well as a winner of the US National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of nine novels, most recently Generosity. He lives in Los Angeles.

In his ambition to define and dissect our culture, Powers is an agile younger brother to Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon * Newsday * If you have children or will have children, if you know children or can remember being a child, dare to read Operation Wandering Soul... Dense in knowledge, rich in imagination, powerful in expression, [it] is bedtime reading for the future. Like the stories read to children, this intensely caring novel can help prevent the nightmare it describes, children out too late at night, far from home, lost, the wandering souls of the future, our future. * USA Today * Powers's prose soars like the most magnificent of choirs, memorably capturing the moments of joy and anguish, barrenness and grace, that add up to life. * Washington Post * Vast and daring... A fully realized and major work of art. * Chicago Tribune *