State of Wonder: A Novel

A New
York Times Bestseller; Orange Prize nominee; a Time Magazine’s Best Books of the Year; a Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Top Ten Best Books; and a Wellcome Trust Book
Prize nominee.

“Expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett’s fiction.”—New
York Times Book Review

Award-winning, New York Times bestselling
author Ann Patchett returns with a provocative and assured novel of morality
and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazon rainforest.

Marina Singh is a research scientist at Vogel,
a pharmaceutical institute in Minnesota, and inconveniently in love with her
boss, Mr. Fox. When one of her colleagues is reported to have died while
following up on the progress of a field team based in Brazil, Marina is
dispatched by Mr. Fox to the Amazon to uncover the truth of his death. And
his widow wants his effects. She travels to Manaus, then down into the
Amazonian delta, deep into the dense, dark, insect-infested jungle. The
research team is looking into the development of a new miracle drug that
could revolutionize Western society. A local tribe has the bark of a certain
tree, it yields a substance which allows them to conceive late into middle
age: many of the women are getting pregnant into their sixties and seventies.
The problem is that the team is taking too long: they have been silent for
two years, and Marina has been tasked to find out what is holding back their
progress. The second problem is more serious: the team is being headed up by
the daunting figure of Annick Swenson, an eminent and fiercely uncompromising
scientist who was once Marina’s colleague, and towards whom Marina has very
complicated feelings. What Marina learns will change her life. In a novel
that is packed with amazing twists and surprises, Ann Patchett returns with
immense confidence to a broad canvas, teeming with atmosphere and characters
and rich with narrative. Remarkable events--fights with anacondas;
encounters with cannibals; deaths; re-births--and profound moral decisions
come together in a novel that will enthrall her many readers and fans and is
guaranteed to be a major bestseller.

Infusing the narrative with the
same ingenuity and emotional urgency that pervaded her acclaimed previous
novels Bel Canto, Taft, Run, The
Magician’s Assistant, and The Patron Saint of Liars, Patchett
delivers an enthralling, innovative tale of aspiration, exploration, and
attachment in State of Wonder—a gripping adventure story and a
profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and
love.

Ann Patchett has dazzled readers with her award-winning books, including The Magician's Assistant and the New York Times bestselling Bel Canto. Now she raises the bar with State of Wonder, a provocative and ambitious novel set deep in the Amazon jungle.

Dr. Marina Singh, a research scientist with a Minnesota pharmaceutical company, is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have all but disappeared in the Amazon while working on what is destined to be an extremely valuable new drug, the development of which has already cost the company a fortune. Nothing about Marina's assignment is easy: not only does no one know where Dr. Swenson is, but the last person who was sent to find her, Marina's research partner Anders Eckman, died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding her former mentor as well as answers to several troubling questions about her friend's death, the state of her company's future, and her own past.

Once found, Dr. Swenson, now in her seventies, is as ruthless and uncompromising as she ever was back in the days of Grand Rounds at Johns Hopkins. With a combination of science and subterfuge, she dominates her research team and the natives she is studying with the force of an imperial ruler. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina, who finds she may still be unable to live up to her teacher's expectations.

In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, and a neighboring tribe of cannibals, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss. It is a tale that leads the reader into the very heart of darkness, and then shows us what lies on the other side.

“Her best novel.…These pages have a pulsing, seductive rhythm… The wonder of State of Wonder is that Patchett poses essential philosophical and bioethical arguments in a story that still speeds along like a literary thriller, reaching a tremendous, deeply emotional crescendo. Bella scrittura.” - Time magazine

“Packs a textbook’s worth of ethical conundrums into a smart and tidily delivered story. . . . Ms. Patchett presents an alluring interplay between civilization and wilderness, between aid and exploitation.” - Wall Street Journal

“In her most incisive work yet, Patchett achieves alchemy, creating complex, compelling characters, packing a Ph.D.’s worth of scientific knowledge into a nail-biting narrative, setting stark human dilemmas against a lush, exotic backdrop.” - People

“Outlandishly entertaining…[with] a brilliantly constructed plot.” - Elle

“[A] gripping new novel. . . . Patchett has an uncanny knack for writing stories about complex characters to whom things actually happen. True to form, she manages to braid questions of medical and social ethics alongside encounters with cannibals, anacondas, even an opera house, making this a bubbling stew of a novel.” - Marie Claire

“Extraordinary. . . . Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can’t do? . . . Patchett’s last knockout pages proceed full-speed ahead, with more twists and turns and trachery than the Amazon River. Nothing is as it seems, and the ending is as shocking as it’s satisfying.” - Boston Globe

“Patchett makes the jungle jump off the page…This is Patchett’s best effort since The Patron Saint of Liars and, yes, that includes Bel Canto” - Shelf Awareness

“The Amazon setting is something Patchett does rather marvelously.… The book is serious, but also so pleasurable that you hope it won’t end.” - NPR

“Emotionally lucid. . . . Patchett is at her lyrical best when she catalogues the jungle.” - The New Yorker

“An engaging, consummately told tale.” - New York Times

“This is surely the smartest, most exciting novel of the summer.” - Washington Post

“A thrilling new novel. . . . The world imagined in this novel is unusually vivid. . . . Reading State of Wonder is a sensory experience, and even after it’s over you’ll keep hearing the sounds of insects, and your own head will still be hot.”

“A spellbinder from bestselling author Patchett. . . . Thrilling, disturbing and moving in equal measures—even better than Patchett’s breakthrough Bel Canto.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A superbly rendered novel. . . . Patchett’s portrayal is as wonderful as it is frightening and foreign. Patchett exhibits an extraordinary ability to bring the horrors and the wonders of the Amazon jungle to life, and her singular characters are wonderfully drawn. . . . Powerful and captivating.” - Library Journal (starred review)

“A thrilling new novel. . . . The world imagined in this novel is unusually vivid. . . . Reading State of Wonder is a sensory experience, and even after it’s over you’ll keep hearing the sounds of insects, and your own head will still be hot.” - MORE Magazine

“The large canvas of sweeping moral issues, both personal and global, comes to life through careful attention to details, however seemingly mundane—from ill-fitting shoes and mosquito bites to a woman tenderly braiding another woman’s hair.” - O, the Oprah Magazine