Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014

'A virtuoso performance' SUNDAY TIMES

'Extraordinary and confounding, mind-spinning and wonderful' INDEPENDENT

'A magnificent and moving novel' LOS ANGELES TIMES

Seventy-year-old avant-garde composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab - where he is conducting the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find musical patterns in surprising places - has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security.

Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive, earning him the moniker 'Bioterrorist Bach'. He hatches a daring plan to transform this disastrous collision with the security state into an unforgettable work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around it.

A gripping escape narrative filled with lyrical wonder, Orfeo is both a portrait of a creative, obsessive man, and a reflection on finding melodies in everyday life.

"Extraordinary and confounding, mind-spinning and wonderful" - Independent on Sunday

"Powers is prodigiously talented. besides being fearfully erudite, he writes lyrical prose, has a seductive sense of wonder and is an acute observer of social life" - New York Times

"A virtuoso performance" - Sunday Times

"A magnificent and moving novel" - Los Angeles Times

"The best novel about classical music ... since Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus" - Independent

"Orfeo has a galloping finale that is sweet, funny, sad and haunting all at once ... A formidably intelligent, ecstatically noisy novel" - Guardian

"Extraordinary ... His evocations of music, let alone lost love, simply soar off the page ... Once again, Richard Powers proves himself to be one of our finest novelists" - Newsday