Richard Powers's "Overstory" wins Pulitzer for fiction

Winner: THE OVERSTORY, by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton)



Our reviewer called this novel a “delightfully choreographed, ultimately breathtaking hoodwink.” One might think, at first, that its tales are about unrelated people, but “standing overhead with outstretched limbs are the real protagonists. Trees will bring these small lives together into large acts of war, love, loyalty and betrayal.”

Mr. Powers, 61, is known as a brainy novelist, but “The Overstory” tested even his intellectual capacity: Its central characters are trees. The environmental plot involves humans, but also communication occurring in nature. Mr. Powers called the Pulitzer Prize “an astonishing recognition,” and he said the reception to the novel proved to him that readers were “hungry for a story that takes the nonhuman seriously, and tries to reconnect the human to a world we’re so alienated from.”

nyt