{"product_id":"plowing-the-dark-9780312280123","title":"Plowing the Dark","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers's \u003ci\u003ePlowing the Dark \u003c\/i\u003erecasts the rules of the novel and remains one his most daring works--a mesmerizing fiction explores the imagination's power to both destroy and save. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In a digital laboratory on the shores of Puget Sound, a band of virtual-reality researchers races to complete the Cavern, an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a vast Byzantine cathedral. In a war-torn Mediterranean city, an American is held hostage, chained to a radiator in another empty white room. What can possibly join these two remote places? Only the shared imagination, a room that these people unwittingly build in common, where they are all about to meet. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAdie Klarpol, a skilled but disillusioned artist, comes back to life, revived by the thrill of working with cutting-edge technology. Against the collapse of Cold War empires and the fall of the Berlin Wall, she retreats dangerously into the cyber-realities she has been hired to create. On the other side of the globe, Taimur Martin, an English teacher recovering from a failed love affair, is picked up off the streets in Beirut by Islamic fundamentalists and held in solitary captivity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"Mention Richard Powers' name to other writers and see them get that faraway look in their eyes: They are calculating the eventual reach of his influence.\"--Sven Birkerts, \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRICHARD POWERS\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of a dozen novels, \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eincluding \u003ci\u003eThe Overstory\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, as well as \u003ci\u003eThe Echo Maker\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Powers has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction, and is a four-time National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Picador USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50543543779602,"sku":"9780312280123","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_6abbc882-9ebb-4ec0-b775-f5f880d8a432.jpg?v=1731511119","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/plowing-the-dark-9780312280123","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}