Generosity: An Enhancement

A playful and provocative novel about the discovery of the happiness gene.

The Washington Post - Ron Charles

Sixteen years after Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac, Richard Powers has heard the alarming implications of treatments that let us buy better moods and personalities. His cerebral new novel offers a chilling examination of the life we're reengineering with our chromosomes and brain chemistry…Although you might expect a novel so weighted with medical and philosophical arguments to flatten its characters into brittle stereotypes, ultimately that's the most impressive aspect of this meditation on happiness and humanness. As Generosity drives toward its surprising conclusion, these characters grow more complex and poignant, increasingly baffled by the challenge and the opportunity of remaking ourselves to our heart's content.

Having earned a bit of a reputation for being the reclusive genius type -- he didn't give interviews until he had published his third book, and didn't consent to having his photo on the jacket until his fifth -- novelist Richard Powers explains to The New York Times, "I wanted the books to speak for themselves."