National Bestseller

National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Playground and The Overstory, a magnificent double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of twenty-five years.

"The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity's Rainbow . . . An outright marvel." —Washington Post

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 critically acclaimed third novel from Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Powers, The Gold Bug Variations is an intellectual tour-de-force that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art.