by Don DeLillo
First published 2009
Jack Gladney runs the Hitler studies department at College-on-the-Hill, but his academic expertise cannot protect him from his deepest terror: death itself. He and his wife Babette share sleepless nights wondering which of them will die first. Jack finds an unlikely philosophical companion in his colleague Murray, who teaches seminars about car crashes and joins him in dissecting the deaths of icons like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Hitler. Their conversations reveal how celebrity mortality becomes a lens for examining our own fears. As Jack and Babette navigate their marriage, their shared phobia creates both distance and intimacy. The question of who will be left behind haunts every moment of their relationship, turning their love into a race against time and uncertainty.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century, academia
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: College-on-the-Hill
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
310 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: death, mental-illness