Recommendations from our site
“One important thing to know about Underworld is that it is Don DeLillo’s masterwork…The novel begins with an absolutely fabulous prologue: people say it’s the best prologue ever written. It’s called ‘The Triumph of Death.’ It’s only 40 pages long—so you could read the prologue by itself and then decide whether you want to read the other 800 pages or not. That might be a good way into Underworld.“ Read more...
The Best Novels about the History of the United States
Bernard T. Joy, Literary Scholar
“It’s the kind of book that makes me want to make superlative, hyperbolic claims, like ‘the greatest novel of the twentieth century’… It’s such an extraordinarily vast and all-reaching book. Much of it is set in New York, and I think one thing DeLillo does so brilliantly—and does better than anyone else—is create a sense of cross-currents and coincidence. Of course, Manhattan is mainly a grid system of streets, so it really serves the book’s depiction of intersecting forces and intersecting lives…It’s a mind-blowing book, everyone should read it.” Read more...
Hermione Hoby on New York Novels
Hermione Hoby, Journalist
“This is DeLillo’s big, thick novel which ranges over several decades of American history. It’s a book about waste, about trash, about what society sweeps under the rug….Don DeLillo understands sport better than most as a very American enactment of the religious impulse. He understands sport as an American ritual and religion, with moments of collective catharsis or hysteria.” Read more...
Chad Harbach, Novelist
