“Bewilderment” marks Powers’s latest and perhaps furthest foray into science fiction, but it has ominous echoes of contemporary America — catastrophic weather, political unrest, a Trump-like president who tweets erratically and spouts conspiracy theories about election fraud, a deadly virus that jumps from cows to humans and spreads rapidly before it gets detected.
The novel is also a coda to “The Overstory,” whose success catapulted Powers to new levels of literary fame. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, drawing praise from the likes of Barack Obama, David Byrne, Jane Fonda and Geraldine Brooks. But while “The Overstory” changed his life and career, it also left Powers, now 64, drained and uncertain if he would write again.
I had noticed Peter’s race, and I imagine my kids did too, but we never talked about it. What I had been reading right over, and repeatedly, was what Peter’s race meant. Can it mean nothing? Clearly not—it is noteworthy and groundbreaking. Yet I was reading colorblind. Why? Was this what the author intended?
Unlike his last two books, “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” which dealt with the serious social justice themes of slavery and Florida’s segregated juvenile justice system, “Harlem Shuffle” is a wildly entertaining romp. But as you might expect with this two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur genius, Whitehead also delivers a devastating, historically grounded indictment of the separate and unequal lives of Blacks and whites in mid-20th century New York.