Generosity: From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of BEWILDERMENT

Description

When Russell Stone becomes the teacher of a young Algerian woman with a disturbingly luminous presence, he is both entranced and troubled. How can this refugee from terror radiate such bliss? Is it possible to be so open and alive without coming to serious harm? Soon, Thassa's joyful personality comes to the attention of the notorious geneticist and advocate for genomic enhancement, Thomas Kurton, whose research has enabled him to announce his discovery of the genetic underpinnings of happiness. Thassa's congenital optimism is severely tested by the growing media circus. Devoured by the public as a living prophecy, her genetic secret will transform both Russell and Kurton, as well as the world at large. Generosity is Richard Powers' most exuberant and exhilarating book yet.

Richard Powers is the author of nine novels. The Echo Maker won the US National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Powers has received a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Award and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He lives in Illinois.

Powers is one of the best writers working now. -- Audrey Niffenegger Smart, tender and wrenchingly anxious about the approaching era... Generosity is a bracingly intelligent fable about the choices that face us. * Sunday Telegraph * Generosity throngs with vivid personalities... Compelling * Independent * Brilliantly crafted... [Generosity] should confirm Powers's status as one of our finest novelists of ideas * New Scientist * Compulsive... Powers [is] a modern Renaissance man, as at home in the language of science as in the laboratories of literature... A meditation on the human condition. * Observer * Powers... is one of our most scientifically literate novelists, with a gift for exploring complex science with cool clarity... He can nail emotional complexities with precision, while using his characters to explore how emerging technologies might shape our lives... Beautifully expressed * Daily Telegraph * Provocative... fascinating... dazzling -- Ron Charles * Washington Post *