Don DeLillo, página 2 de 8

?Submón és una de les millors novel.les del segle?. John Burnside, ScotsmanPublicada el 1997, Submón és la història secreta de la Nord-Amèrica de la segona meitat del segle XX; és la història dels ef

An epic novel that encompasses fifty years of American historyWith an introduction by Rachel KushnerUnderworld opens - famously - at the Dodgers-Giants 1951 National League final, where Bobby Thomson hits The Shot Heard Round the World and wins the pennant race for the Giants. But on the other side of the planet, another highly significant shot was fired: the USSR's first atomic detonation. And so begins a masterpiece of gloriously symphonic storytelling.DeLillo loosely follows the fate of the winning baseball as the book swells and rolls through time. He offers a panoramic vision of America, defined by the overarching conflict of the cold war. This is an awe-inspiring story, seen in deep, clear detail, of men and women, together and apart, as they search for meaning, survival and connection in the toughest of times.

A rich parody of the parallels between the jargon of football and the jargon of battle and a touch of cold-war existentialism makes this powerful novel as hilarious as it is relevant.Nobody, it seems, could write better than this. No one could have a clearer vision of the micro-circuitry of post-modern life Evening StandardOstensibly, DeLillos blackly comic second novel is about Gary Harkness, a football player and student at Logos College, west Texas. During a season of unprecedented success, Gary becomes increasingly fixated on the threat of nuclear war. Both frightened and fascinated by the prospect, he listens to his team-mates discussing match tactics in much the same terms as generals might contemplate global conflict. But as the terminologies of football and nuclear war the language of end zones become interchanged, the polysemous nature of words emerges, and DeLillo forces us to see beyond the sterile reality of substitution. This clever and playful novel is a timeless and topical study of human beings obsession with conflict and confrontation.

Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say "an uncertain farewell" to her as she surrenders her body. "We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn't it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?" These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the book's narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing "the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth." Don DeLillo's seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world-terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague-against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, "the intimate touch of earth and sun."

he wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time—an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, a meditation on death,

Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. He lives in Manhattan. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful day in his life. When he woke up, he didn't know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut. As his stretch limousine moves across town, his world begins to fall apart. But more worrying than the loss of his fortune is the realization that his life may be under threat. 'A brilliant excursion into the decadence of contemporary culture' Sunday Times 'One of America's smartest and most disturbing writers' The Times

Tutto inizia con un cadavere: quello di un uomo vestito da donna, abbandonato in un cantiere. La polizia fa ipotesi banali, solo un certo Lightborne, negoziante e collezionista di curiosit erotiche, crede di sapere la verit. La vittima sarebbe venuta in possesso di un documento unico: il filmato di un'orgia con Hitler protagonista, nel bunker sottostante il Reich, pochi giorni prima della fine del nazismo. Diverse persone - una giornalista di estrema sinistra, un agente segreto, un gallerista coinvolto nei traffici della pornografia, tre reduci del Vietnam - si lanciano alla ricerca del misterioso film.

New York, avril 2000. Bloqué dans sa somptueuse limousine par un embouteillage géant qui paralyse Manhattan, Eric Packer, golden boy de vingt-huit ans, assiste au crépuscule du système qui a porté sa compagnie au firmament de la galaxie Wall Street. Les yeux rivés sur les cours d'une monnaie dont il a parié la chute et qui remonte contre toute attente, tétanisé par l'irruption dans son monde virtuel d'un réel ensauvagé qui embrase les rues de la ville, Packer accède, en vingt-quatre heures d'une initiation spectaculaire, aux codes qui détiennent le secret de son assassinat annoncé.Concentrant dans un espace littéraire superbement inédit tous les langages où se profère l'inquiétant scénario global du monde contemporain, Cosmopolis fait du présent une fable, du futur une histoire et de l'archaïque, peut-être, notre étrange avenir.