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The Echo Maker by Richard Powers — book cover

The Echo Maker

by Richard Powers

National Book Award for Fiction · 2006 · Winner
Farrar, Straus and Girouxliterary-fictionISBN 9780312426453

Award History

AwardYearStatus
National Book Award for FictionFiction2006Winner

About This Book

When Mark Schluter survives a near-fatal accident on a remote Nebraska highway and wakes from a coma, he can no longer recognise his sister Karin, despite knowing her identity. His neurologist Gerald Weber—loosely based on Oliver Sacks—arrives to study this rare condition called Capgras syndrome, and all three characters must confront questions about consciousness, identity, and what it means to be known.

About the Author

Richard Powers was born on June 18, 1957, in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Lincolnwood before moving to Bangkok at age eleven. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a BA in English in 1978 and an MA in 1980. Inspired by a 1914 photograph, he quit a programming job to write his debut novel Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985). Read more →

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