Playground cover art

Playground

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 1, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Join Audible for only £0.99/mo for the first 3 months, and get a bonus £10 Audible voucher. Bonus credit notification will be received via email.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
Buy Now for £12.99
Limited time offer. £0.99/mo for the first 3 months + £10 Audible voucher, and £8.99/month thereafter. Terms apply. Get this deal.

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THE OVERSTORY AND BEWILDERMENT

Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home.

All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

'Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep and alive' PERCIVAL EVERETT

'An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways - gripping, alarming and uplifting' EMMA DONOGHUE

‘Powers is a master of taking important topics of our times – from threats to our oceans and climate change to AI – and turning them into riveting and fiercely relevant books imbued with psychological insight and a deep awe for nature. This eloquent dance of the scientific and emotional makes him one of our finest story tellers. PLAYGROUND is brilliant, captivating and important – and the best book I’ve read this year’ ANDREA WULF

©2024 Richard Powers (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sea Adventures Small Town & Rural Feel-Good

Critic reviews

Powers is a master of taking important topics of our times – from threats to our oceans and climate change to AI – and turning them into riveting and fiercely relevant books imbued with psychological insight and a deep awe for nature. This eloquent dance of the scientific and emotional makes him one of our finest story tellers. PLAYGROUND is brilliant, captivating and important (Andrea Wulf)
Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep and alive (Percival Everett)
An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways - gripping, alarming and uplifting (Emma Donoghue)
This ambitious, rapturous Booker-longlisted epic explores life underwater, generative AI, climate crisis and the power of play
Playground ... isn't merely a great American novel, but a magnificent one
Along with its environmental warnings, the book carries an intriguing look at the ways people and animals play, as in the boys’ competitive chess, the antics of manta rays, the allure of computer games, and what a meta-minded author might do with his readers. An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.
Magisterial, moving and thought-provoking ... a beautiful love letter to our oceans
A work of imaginative skill that opens doors into an undersea future where human exceptionalism isn't taken for granted, and finds hope where other writers, and thinkers, would dwell in despair
A compelling, eloquent love letter to what [Powers] calls this "fading" planet ... There is a lot going on in Playground, with reflections on power, nature and friendship in a book with well-drawn protagonists and graceful prose. It is a story that rewards a slow read for full immersement
Powerful, mesmerically beautiful
This was astonishing! I’m off to dive in again and make sense of it… if that’s possible?

Surreal but astonishing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved this creative, beautiful book which left me wanting much more, and to visit the ocean.

Moving and clever

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It’s a brilliant book, well narrated, but the twisty and unexpected ending really requires re-reading of some of the later parts and that’s not so easy in an audiobook.

Very clever, ending does your head in

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The lives of amazing characters magically intertwined on our incredible watery planet, about which we learn lots. Superb narration from a cast of actors.

Outstanding

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’m still digesting this epic story of friendship, love, understanding and misunderstandings, brought to life with wonderfully evocative and descriptive language, especially of the little known world underwater

What an epic!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
We’ve had the forest ecosystem in Overstory now we get the ocean ecosystem. An engaging fiction about the reality of the entanglement of all life on earth

Great addition to the Powers cannon.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoy Richard Power’s gift of fictionalising so many contemporary ideas. Each novel demonstrates the depth of his intellect which is on level I can only just follow. I love the cuttlefish references as we named our cricket club after their inclusiveness.

Deep Powers

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was swept away by compelling characters with disparate obsessions from poetry and the ancient game Go to deep sea exploration through Chicago to Polynesian and beyond to see both how everything connects, not only through data and near future AI but through love and play. Impressive and wide reaching.

A stunning read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I think the narrators did a good job but I didn’t enjoy this. However it’s educational, intellectual, erudite and original. There was shock from some that it didn’t make the booker short list but it doesn’t fit the judges remit.

Educational

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Stunning story. I loved it so much! Narrators complimented each character and I loved them all! I wish it made the shortlist for the Booker Prize.

Bravo

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews