Over the past two decades, our understanding of the ways life functions have been transformed in many ways but the public narratives about biology have not kept up. By drawing on these recent discoveries and insights, this book outlines a new vision of biology for the 21st century.

Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of &i>Interpreter of Maladies&/i>, comes to Picador with an astonishing work of fiction, set in and around Rome.