Search  for anything...
NA

Playground: A Novel

  • Based on 5,616 reviews
Condition: New
Checking for product changes
$20.54 Why this price?
Save $9.45 was $29.99

Buy Now, Pay Later

As low as $5 / mo
  • – 4-month term
  • – No impact on credit
  • – Instant approval decision
  • – Secure and straightforward checkout

Ready to go? Add this product to your cart and select a plan during checkout.

Payment plans are offered through our trusted finance partners Klarna, PayTomorrow, Affirm, Afterpay, Apple Pay, and PayPal. No-credit-needed leasing options through Acima may also be available at checkout.

Learn more about financing & leasing here.

Free shipping on this product

30-day refund/replacement

To qualify for a full refund, items must be returned in their original, unused condition. If an item is returned in a used, damaged, or materially different state, you may be granted a partial refund.

To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.

View our full returns policy here.

Availability: In Stock.
Fulfilled by Amazon
Arrives Saturday, Jun 21
Order within 13 hours and 48 minutes
Available payment plans shown during checkout

Recently Viewed

Description

New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize As Seen on CBS Saturday Morning • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • One of the Ten Best Books of 2024, according to the Washington Post and AARP • A Time Must-Read Book of 2024 • One of NPR's "Books We Love" for 2024 • An Economist, The New Yorker, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2024 • Selected as Fall 2024 "Fiction to Read" by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, People, and Parade A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company


Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 24, 2024


Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 400 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324086033


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 31


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.48 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #4,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in Political Fiction (Books) #29 in Friendship Fiction (Books) #131 in Literary Fiction (Books)


Frequently asked questions

If you place your order now, the estimated arrival date for this product is: Saturday, Jun 21

Yes, absolutely! You may return this product for a full refund within 30 days of receiving it.

To initiate a return, please visit our Returns Center.

View our full returns policy here.

  • Klarna Financing
  • Affirm Pay in 4
  • Affirm Financing
  • Afterpay Financing
  • PayTomorrow Financing
  • Financing through Apple Pay
Leasing options through Acima may also be available during checkout.

Learn more about financing & leasing here.

Similar Products

Top Amazon Reviews

    • Another Powers Triumph
Format: Hardcover
"I have a story to tell, the story of my friend and me and how we changed the future of mankind." [p. 137] "I asked you for a bedtime story, and you've conjured up a world so palpable that I mistake your characters for the people they once were." [p. 372] Who wrote this book? The author named on the cover and the copyright page is Richard Powers. But there is another author implied, and to grasp that is to make sense of some contradictions and chronological anomalies. There are two stories here. One has an omniscient narrator; the other is told by Todd Keane, a billionaire Facebook-like developer who is dictating his memoirs to an unnamed party as he faces his own decline from Lewy body dementia. Some of the same characters appear in both tales, but the one told by the omniscient narrator covers a broader scope. It is largely set on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, which relinquished its phosphate mining rights years ago to a company that left the island in tatters. Now, a new suitor has appeared -- a wealthy corporation that wants to use Makatea as a base for a "seasteading" operation, aiming to construct a floating city that will not need to answer much to any external political power. The 82 residents of Makatea must vote on whether to accept that proposal, which promises rebuilding and riches. Among Makatea's population are Rafi Young and Ina Aroita, who met as students at the University of Illinois. Rafi, a Black man, spent his childhood in a rough Chicago neighborhood; Ina, an artist, grew up in the South Pacific. They have adopted two orphaned children, and they seem to enjoy living away from the bustle of city life. Another island resident is Evelyne Beaulieu, a highly accomplished diver from Montreal, who once wrote a children's book extolling the wonders of the ocean. As a ten year-old, Todd Keane acquired Beaulieu's book, which he found enchanting. In times of stress, he imagined himself able to breathe under water, while walking from Illinois to Michigan via the bottom of the Great Lake. Todd came from a wealthy family in a North Shore suburb of Chicago. He was sent to an exclusive prep school, where he met Rafi, who was there by way of a scholarship endowed by Todd's father. Rafi was of a literary bent, in contrast to Todd's analytic mindset, but they bonded over chess, and -- later -- the ancient game of Go. The two of them ended up as roommates at the University of Illinois, where Todd had access to the university's powerful mainframe computer system, and Rafi studied literature. Eventually, Todd conceived the idea of an online platform that allowed participants to interact with one another; Rafi suggested that it could be improved by awarding points to players on the basis of their rated comments. The game, which came to be called Playground, evolved into a highly successful product that made Todd extremely rich. Rafi remained immersed in his literary endeavors, and the two eventually lost contact with each other, due in part to Todd's impulsive violation of Rafi's privacy concerning a tragic childhood episode. A review of _Playground_ doesn't really need to recapitulate the entirety of its (mainly complementary) stories. Powers produces many compelling, cinematic descriptions of underwater sea life, which may represent his attempt to convince readers that the deteriorating oceans are worth rescuing (i.e., an aquatic version of his earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, _The Overstory_, which did the same for trees). His long-standing interest in computers is also prominent, nodding to current artificial intelligence projects such as ChatGPT, and sounding warnings about the future perils of AI. The book's final pages reconcile its two storylines, resolving a puzzle that must have been on the minds of readers up to that point. Powers' polymathic brilliance illuminates the entire work. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2024 by BluegrassPicker
    • Engossing, Yet Disappointing
Format: Hardcover
Richard Powers’ latest novel, Playground, has a choose-your-own-genre feel to it. Want a straight-forward romantic comedy? He offers two meant for-each-other leads who suffer through an insurmountable split, then re-unite. Or maybe tragic rom-com…another pair, best friends from youth, suffer a falling out only to finally re-engage after one has lost his mental faculties, his whole personhood. How about a lyrical journey through the ocean’s depths, visited by a woman who spends her life visiting underwater Edens, allowing Powers to rhapsodize about the mysteries therein. But wait! He weaves in the story of an early fictional social media behemoth, which grows to monstrous proportions by gamifying the interactions among its multi-billion-strong user base. As if that’s not enough, he suggests that its increasing reliance on deep-learning artificial intelligence might result in human resurrection – literally, the recreation of the physical being, consciousness, and memory of any and everyone who’s ever lived. All of this floats around a straight-forward story of a tiny (population: 80) Pacific isle which finds itself facing a recurrent nightmare. Unknown investors intend to use the decaying ports and other facilities left over from phosphate mining which decimated the island in the 19th and 20th centuries. They plan on building floating cities, launching them from Makatea into open waters, free at last from any governmental regulation or economic parasitism. The islanders are given the option to vote on that prospect. It is the resulting discussion which serves as the scaffolding of all of Powers’ other concerns. Two narrators appear. One, first-person, is Todd Keane, the creator of that social media platform, “Playground”. He dictates his part of the story to the AI machine he has created. Through him, we learn about his youthful friendship with Rafi Young, founded on their love of games, specifically chess, then Go. Todd is a child of privilege from Evanston just north of Chicago. His father is a manic financier who offered little love to Todd, his sister, and mother. Rafi’s own father, separated from his mother when Rafi was five, has drilled him playing games just as Todd’s did. Donald Young wants to ensure his son, who lives in the black ghettos of South Chicago, will be strong and secure, able to work twice as hard and be twice as tough as any white man. Despite that attempt, Rafi grows up to be a literary academic, endlessly perfecting his thesis on 19th century poets. He and Todd remain close through their Jesuit high school, and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. While in college, they meet, and Rafi falls in love with, Ina Aroita. Daughter of an Hawaiian father and Tahitian mother, she grows up in Honolulu, and ventures to U of I after high school. There, she is fascinated by her first sight of snow, and develops her artistic talent of taking found objects, melding them together, and letting them speak for her. Their three stories are told at times by Todd, and at times by an omniscient narrator with whom his musings and reminiscences alternate. Also in that narration, we follow the on-going story of Makatea’s community, which includes Eveline Beaulieu. We meet Evie first as a twelve-year old French-Canadian girl whose father has thrown her into the deep end of a swimming pool, forty pounds of underwater breathing apparatus attached to her back. She survives that, demonstrating the practicality of the technology which Jacques Cousteau and others would use to open the door to all that lies below. Her story only tangentially connects to the other three. At age 92, she finds herself, along with Ina and Rafi, as a new arrival on that tiny atoll about to be overwhelmed by the 21st century. Powers does eventually bring all this together, but the structure seems a bit creaky, an overly complicated way of merging all his ideas and characters. And in the end, it’s not clear there is a unity to his purpose. But along the way, his writing is sparkling. Each character reveals an inner and outer complexity, appearing completely whole. His descriptions of the early internet, the explosive and dangerous growth of monetized social media, and the veiled musings of current day artificial intelligence are captivating. Even more mesmerizing are the trips Eveline takes into the hidden world below the ocean surface, Creatures unimaginable come alive for us. We see dancing lights on the skin of a cuttle-fish and are fascinated by the continuing relationship between Evie and a manta ray trapped in fishing line. Powers takes care with every person we meet. The unwilling mayor of the island struggles to bring meetings to order. The elderly “Queen” of the island communicates by dance and song. Even a hermit seems worthy of attention. Indeed, the most affecting moment of the book might be the death of a minor character from cancer. Even though I enjoyed this book and was drawn more and more quickly into the overlapping stories, I couldn’t help but feel that Powers’ editor was afraid to tell the Pulitzer Prize winner, “Richard, decide what you are really trying to tell us here, and hone in on that.” ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2024 by Al Truscott
    • Beautiful writing!!
Format: Kindle
When I finish a book and can't stop thinking about it, I know I have read something special. The theme is life. Beautiful descriptions of the ocean and its inhabitants along with a good study of human character. Of course, the potential impact of the trashing of the oceans coupled with the potential power of AI is so relevant. Don't be discouraged at the beginning of the book... keep reading because it is well worth it. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2025 by Still Reading
    • Planet Ocean
Format: Kindle
An astonishing description of our oceans and possible future of AI. Even my hero Sir David Attenborough agrees on the importance of our better understaning of our water world. As a scuba diver myself I so enjoyed the brilliant descriptions of this different dimension to our landbased existence. The description of the birth of the internet was fascinating and believable. So was the AI still to be discovered. Marianne Jordan ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2025 by Marianne Jordan

Can't find a product?

Find it on Amazon first, then paste the link below.