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

'Powers has triumphantly restored ... the philosophical novel' OBSERVER

'A heroic tour de force' NEW YORK TIMES

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.

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 *

Richard Powers has published fourteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.