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The Echo Maker

Richard Powers

2006451 pagesabout 7–10 hours
2006
first published
  • 2006Farrar, Straus and Giroux · 451 pages · ENGISBN 9780374146351
  • 2007Vintage Books · 569 pages · ENGISBN 9780099506027
  • 2007Large Print Press · 763 pages · ENGISBN 9781594132087
  • 2007Picador · 464 pages · ENGISBN 9780312426439
  • 2006S FISCHERISBN 9783100590220
  • 2010Literatura Random House · 576 pagesISBN 9788439721949
  • 2007Thorndike Press · 765 pages · ENGISBN 9780786293759
  • 2006Sound Library · ENGISBN 9780792745709

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman–who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister–is really an identical impostor. Shattered by her brother's refusal to recognize her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, famous for his case histories describing the infinitely bizarre worlds of brain disorder. Weber recognizes Mark as a rare case of Capgras Syndrome, a doubling delusion, and eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what happened the night of his inexplicable accident. The truth of that evening will change the lives of all three beyond recognition.

How it feels

AtmosphereBleak

How it reads

Character focusSmall ensemble

When and where

ThemesFamily
How do you feel?