Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED BEWILDERMENT AND THE OVERSTORY

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Rosenthal Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

Special Citation, PEN Hemingway Award

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In the spring of 1914, renowned German photographer August Sander takes a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Richard Powers' brilliant and compelling first novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. In one, a chance museum-goer becomes obsessed with the photo; and in the other, a young technical writer in Boston discovers he has a personal connection to it. The three stories connect in an entirely surprising way, describing nothing less than the history of a century of brutality and progress.

'Nothing less than brilliant' John Updike



Richard Powers is the author of thirteen novels, including

Orfeo (which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize),

The Overstory (which was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize) and

Bewilderment, shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. He is the recipient of a MacArthur grant and the National Book Award, and has been a four-time NBCC finalist. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.



An

outstanding novel



A first novel of intricate merit...

A rich imagination glitters throughout



Unexpected and richly imaginative... Full of intellectual descriptions and stylistic diversions



If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century

he'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big.



A writer of blistering intellect... [Powers is] a novelist of ideas and a novelist of witness, and in both respects, he has few American peers