Richard Powers' Playground was published by W.W. Norton & Company in September 2024. Powers' novel follows four seemingly separate characters, who deal with the earth and its intricacies in different ways. The first character, Evie Beaulieu, experiences contends with the world's first acqua lung, which allows her to breathe underwater. The second, Ina Aroita, uses art as a way to cope with her tumultuous home life. The final two characters, Rafi Young and Todd Keane, go to the same high school in Chicago, but are vastly different people. Nevertheless, after bonding over a very old board game, the two uses their combined strength to learn more about (and make advances in) literature and artificial intelligence (AI). Ultimately, Playground is a novel about technology's connection to the environment and what it means to be human.
For his 2019 novel The Overstory, Richard Powers won the Pulitzer Prize and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. Playground has received similarly positive reviews and is likewise primed to be an overnight bestseller. For instance, People Magazine called the novel a "must-read." Additionally, Kirkus Reviews wrote a largely positive review of the novel, saying it is "a challenging novel, fragmented but compelling, with fine writing."
