Plowing the Dark — Richard Powers

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Playground. “Plowing the Dark is virtual reality composed in a language that will never go obsolete.” -- Kevin Berger, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

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.

Adie 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.

“Superb . . . Powers pulls off one of the most astonishing feats I've ever seen in literature . . . daring, unpredictable, and emotionally powerful.” -- Steven Moore, The Washington Post Book World

“A fiercely visual book . . . the effect is spectacular . . . The most visceral prose Powers has ever written.” -- Daniel Zalewski, The New York Times Book Review

“I don't have the space to do justice to all the wonders of craftsmanship in Plowing the Dark . . . This is the first emblematic novel of the 21st century, a lesson and an inspiration.” -- Judy Doenges, The Seattle Times