Das große Spiel

"Das große Spiel" (Penguin, 2024; German translation by Eva Bonné) is the German edition of Richard Powers's novel "Playground," published in the original English the same year.

Set on Makatea, a remote, half-forgotten island in the vast Pacific where a new kind of society is meant to take shape, the novel follows four people whose fates become entangled with each other and with the planet itself: Evelyne Beaulieu, who dives into the ocean depths to study the mysterious behavior of giant manta rays; Ina Aroita, who wanders the island's beaches for materials for her sculptures, though the sea now washes up mostly plastic waste; and the introspective book-lover Rafi Young and visionary computer scientist Todd Keane, whose deep friendship is tested by an audacious plan to build a new world — one meant to save them all from the decline of the current one.

The novel weaves together questions of technology, ecology, and friendship against the backdrop of a fragile island ecosystem, in the sweeping, idea-driven style that won Powers the Pulitzer Prize for "The Overstory."