Mao IIMao II

"One of the most ironic, intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America" (The New York Times), Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch individualist. A love triangle that moves from New York to London to Beirut, Mao II tells an intimate story of faith, longing and redemption.
Bill Gray, a famous, reclusive novelist, emerges from his isolation when he becomes the key figure in an event staged to force the release of a poet hostage in Beirut. As Bill enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms, Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover - and Bill's. An extraordinary novel from Don DeLillo about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist, Mao II explores a world in which the novelist's power to influence the inner life of a culture now belongs to bomb-makers and gunmen. Mao II is the work of an ingenious writer at the height of his powers. -- Publisher's description.