The Gold Bug Variations

The Gold Bug Variations Synopsis

A magnificent novel that probes the meaning of love, science, music and art, by the showstopping author of The Echo Makers. Reissued and rejacketed along with Powers' entire backlist. The Gold Bug Variations is a double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of twenty-five years.

Stuart Ressler, a brilliant young molecular biologist, sets out in 1957 to crack the genetic code. His efforts are sidetracked by other, more intractable codes - social, moral, musical, spiritual - and he falls in love with a member of his research team. Years later, another young man and woman team up to investigate a different scientific mystery - why did the eminently promising Ressler suddenly disappear from the world of science?

Strand by strand, these two love stories twist about each other in a double helix of desire. 'The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow... An outright marvel.' Washington Post