In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 'The Overstory', Richard Powers took us on a journey that decentred humanity and placed at its heart the life of trees - trees as the makers of the world we inhabit, that make the world possible for us - trees that themselves are a world unto themselves. A space we might intelligently inhabit, navigate but which instead we are bent on destroying. In his latest novel, 'Bewilderment', he takes us further in two directions - the first is into the world of astrobiology - what might other planets' ecologies, of which there are millions, look like and second into the mind of a gifted eight-year-old boy, who has lost his animal rights lawyer mother to a car crash and whose father is trying the best he can to help him navigate loss and growing up aware of his sensitivity and vulnerability. One of the ways Theo, the father, beguiles and calms, Robin/Robbie, the son, is through imaginary trips to worlds that he, as an astrobiologist and...