The Silence

Don Delillo

The Silence
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Scribner Book Company
Country
Published
20 October 2020
Pages
128
ISBN
9781982164553

The Silence

Don Delillo

From one of the most dazzling and essential voices in American fiction, a timely and compelling novel set in the near future about five people gathered together in a Manhattan apartment, in the midst of a catastrophic event. Don DeLillo completed this novel just weeks before the advent of Covid-19. The Silence is the story of a different catastrophic event. Its resonances offer a mysterious solace.

It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity.

Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed.

What follows is a dazzling and profoundly moving conversation about what makes us human. Never has the art of fiction been such an immediate guide to our navigation of a bewildering world. Never have DeLillo’s prescience, imagination, and language been more illuminating and essential.

Mysterious…Unexpectedly touching…[DeLillo offers] consolation simply by enacting so well the mystery and awe of the real world. –Joshua Ferris, The New York Times Book Review

DeLillo [has] almost Dayglo powers as a writer. –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Brilliant and astonishing…a masterpiece…manages to renew DeLillo’s longstanding obsessions while also striking deeply and swiftly at the reader’s emotions…The effect is transcendent. –Charles Finch, Chicago Tribune

Daring… provocative… exquisite…captures the swelling fears of our age.

–Ron Charles, The Washington Post

This item is not currently in-stock. It can be ordered online and is expected to ship in approx 4 weeks

Our stock data is updated periodically, and availability may change throughout the day for in-demand items. Please call the relevant shop for the most current stock information. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.