'A great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner.' - San Francisco Chronicle One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books Winner of the Howell's Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Synopsisįinalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award Edgar Hoover, Bobby Thompson, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor, 'this is DeLillo's most affecting novel.a dazzling, phosphorescent work of art' (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). With cameo appearances by Lenny Bruce, J. It is a novel that accepts every challenge of these extraordinary times - Don DeLillo's greatest and most powerful work of fiction. Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep, clear detail and in stadium-sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of the Cold War. ReviewĪ finalist for the National Book Award, Underworld is Don DeLillo's most powerful and riveting novel-'a great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner' ( San Francisco Chronicle). Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep clear detail and in stadium-sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of the Cold War. Condoms, bombs, Chevy Bel Airs and miracle sites on the Web. And flashing in the margins of ordinary life are the curiously connectecd materials of the culture. Lennny Bruce cracking desperate jokes, Mick Jagger with his devil strut, J.

It takes the reader deeply into the lives of Nick and Klara and into modern memory and the soul of American culture - from Bronx tenements to grand ballrooms to a B-52 bombing raid over Vietnam.Ī generation's master spirits come and go. The baseball itself, fought over and scuffed, generates the narrative that follows. The glorious outcome - the home run that wins the game is called the Shot Heard Round the World - shades into the grim news that the Soviet Union has just tested an atomic bomb.

She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.ĭon DeLillo's mesmerizing novel opens with a legendary baseball game played in New York in 1951. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert.

Don delillo underworld cover