The Overstory
Richard Powers · b. 1957 · United States
Why it matters
Nine lives are radicalized, separately and then together, by their encounters with trees. An ambitious ecological epic arguing, structurally, that humans are not fiction's only characters that matter.
At a glance
speculative fictionphilosophical novel
Difficulty 7/10slow pace502 pagesNine interwoven storylines and dense ecological digression.
Deep dive
Why a five-hundred-page novel about trees structures itself like one, and what the activists' campaign of sabotage actually costs the people who wage it.
