The desire to live in our imagination is driven by this suspicion that we're disembodied sensibilities cobbled into our bodies. That idea has infused most of human thought since the very beginning.

The first is a fictional story about the three young men in the picture during World War I. The novel explores the themes of cognitive construction of reality and the relationships between memory and emotional bonds between people and some of the tensions between the beneficial and exploitative aspects of a famous doctor's work. " But Deresiewicz also noted that his "is hardly the standard view of Powers's work.

His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.