The Gold Bug Variations
  • Published: 23 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804951743
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 688
  • RRP: $26.00

The Gold Bug Variations

Formats & editions
Paperback
23 Sep 2025
EBook
7 Nov 2019
Paperback
5 Nov 2019
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From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Overstory and Bewilderment

'A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

In 1957, brilliant biologist Stuart Ressler sets out to crack the genetic code. Yet his efforts are sidetracked by other, more complex codes - social, moral, musical, and spiritual - as he falls in love with a member of his research team.

Years later, another young man and woman investigate a different mystery: why did the promising Ressler suddenly vanish from the world of science?

Strand by strand, these two love stories intertwine in a double helix of desire in an enthralling tale about new love and the mysteries of science.
  • Published: 23 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9781804951743
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 688
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His most recent book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

portrait photo of Richard Powers

Also by Richard Powers

Playground
The Overstory
Bewilderment
Galatea 2.2
Plowing the Dark
The Echo Maker
The Time of our Singing
See all

Praise for The Gold Bug Variations

A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth. The plot is as labyrinthine as any by Umberto Eco ... Extremely witty ... Dip into this book at random and the chances are it will sit up and bite you like a rattlesnake

Sunday Telegraph

The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow ... An outright marvel

Washington Post

The Gold Bug Variations has everything ... Stunning ... Almost every sentence is a heroic tour de force ... The joy to be taken in reading the book is, like the pleasure of studying crystal multiplication, in seeing a pattern swarm mosaically over everything, watching a stencil laid over life

New York Times

One of the best writers working now

Audrey Niffenegger

Powers has triumphantly restored ... the philosophical novel

Observer