Richard Powers’ latest novel Playground draws a distinction between two different kinds of games. There are finite games that we play to win: the aim is to defeat others and demonstrate our superiority and excellence. Then there are infinite games, played for the pleasure of the game itself. The joy of infinite games is not competition, but the discovery of new strategies and moves that previously seemed impossible.

Review: Playground – Richard Powers (Hutchinson Heinemann)

The protagonists of Playground, Rafi Young and Todd Keane, are driven to explore both kinds of play. They connect as troubled teenagers at an elite Chicago private school through their shared love of board games. Rafi is a black scholarship student with an omnivorous love of literature. Todd, from an affluent white family, struggles with people but excels with computers.

Though very different, Rafi and Todd are fundamentally curious players, delighting in unexpected connections and the possibilities they give rise to. But they are also competitive, compelled to find ever-evolving paths to dominance and victory, in their relationships with the world and with one another.

These conflicting impulses create a question that seems to hang over the novel. Do we play to make the best moves that we possibly can? Or to wreck the game for someone else?

While Rafi and Todd’s complex friendship is at the heart of Playground, the novel has many slowly converging plotlines and characters.

The present-day action focuses on the tiny island of Makatea in French Polynesia, where a now middle-aged Rafi, who works as a teacher, lives with his artist wife Ina and their two adopted children. The underpopulated island, scarred by the legacy of phosphorus mining and hydrogen bomb testing, is being visited by the 93-year old Evie Beaulieu, a famous oceanographer, who was once Todd’s childhood idol. Evie is there to explore the bountiful sea life in the reefs surrounding Makatea.

The isolated island has attracted other attention. An American conglomerate plans to use the island as a base for a “seasteading” venture, which will eventually launch floating, autonomous cities onto the open ocean.

Meanwhile, Todd, now a tech billionaire and AI pioneer, is wrestling with a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, a condition that will come to affect his memory, communication and motor functions.

The novel moves between........

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