SALE ON NOW! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

$22.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English
Hutchinson
30 September 2025
From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Overstory and Bewilderment

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014

'A virtuoso performance' SUNDAY TIMES

'Extraordinary and confounding, mind-spinning and wonderful' INDEPENDENT

'A magnificent and moving novel' LOS ANGELES TIMES

Seventy-year-old avant-garde composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab - where he is conducting the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find musical patterns in surprising places - has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security.

Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive, earning him the moniker 'Bioterrorist Bach'. He hatches a daring plan to transform this disastrous collision with the security state into an unforgettable work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around it.

A gripping escape narrative filled with lyrical wonder, Orfeo is both a portrait of a creative, obsessive man, and a reflection on finding melodies in everyday life.
By:  
Imprint:   Hutchinson
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 130mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   267g
ISBN:   9781804951767
ISBN 10:   1804951765
Pages:   384
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Richard Powers has published fourteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Reviews for Orfeo

Extraordinary and confounding, mind-spinning and wonderful * Independent on Sunday * Powers is prodigiously talented. besides being fearfully erudite, he writes lyrical prose, has a seductive sense of wonder and is an acute observer of social life * New York Times * A virtuoso performance * Sunday Times * A magnificent and moving novel * Los Angeles Times * The best novel about classical music ... since Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus * Independent * Orfeo has a galloping finale that is sweet, funny, sad and haunting all at once ... A formidably intelligent, ecstatically noisy novel * Guardian * Extraordinary ... His evocations of music, let alone lost love, simply soar off the page ... Once again, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our finest novelists * Newsday *


See Inside

See Also