A New York Times Notable Book
A New York Times bestseller, "DeLillo's haunting new novel, Zero
K--his most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece,
Underworld" (The New York Times), is a meditation on death and an
embrace of life.
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 "daring...provocative...exquisite" (The Washington Post)
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."
"One of the most mysterious, emotionally moving, and rewarding books of
DeLillo's long career" (The New York Times Book Review), Zero K is a
glorious, soulful novel from one of the great writers of our time.
