Operation Wandering Soul

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED BEWILDERMENT AND THE OVERSTORY

In the paediatrics ward of a public hospital, a group of sick children is gathering. The surrogate parents of this band - a tired, overworked surgical resident and a therapist - are charged with prolonging their lives using storytelling and make-believe alone.

Operation Wandering Soul is a novel 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 is the most intellectually stimulating novelist at work in the English language today' Daily Telegraph



Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels, including

Orfeo (which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize),

The Overstory (which was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize) and

Bewilderment, shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. He is the recipient of a MacArthur grant and the National Book Award, and has been a four-time NBCC finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.



In his ambition to define and dissect our culture,

Powers is an agile younger brother to Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon



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.



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.



Vast and daring... A fully realized and major work of art.