by Don DeLillo
First published 2022
This collection opens with James Axton, a risk analyst who travels the world assessing corporate dangers from terrorism and political chaos. His work leads him to discover a murderous cult that kills based on the letters of ancient alphabets. The volume continues with Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies at a small college, who faces a toxic airborne event that forces his family to evacuate. His academic detachment crumbles as he confronts his own mortality in a world saturated by consumer brands and media noise. The final novel follows Lee Harvey Oswald from his time in Russia through his return to America, tracing the path that led to Dallas in 1963. DeLillo reimagines the assassination through the eyes of CIA operatives, Cuban exiles, and Oswald himself. Each story examines characters caught between personal anxieties and larger historical forces, where language itself becomes both weapon and refuge.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-vs-historical, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Russia, Dallas
Period: 1963
1100 pages · Hardcover · Library of America
Content warnings: violence