Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Howell's Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books
"A great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner." -San Francisco Chronicle
*With a new preface by Don DeLillo on the 25th anniversary of publication*
Don DeLillo's mesmerizing novel was a major bestseller when it was published in 1997 and was the most widely reviewed novel of the year. It opens with a legendary baseball game played between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants in 1951. The home run that won the game was called the Shot Heard Round the World, and was shadowed by the terrifying news that on the same day, Russia tested its first hydrogen bomb. Underworld then tells the story of Klara Sax and Nick Shay, and of a half century of American life during the Cold War and beyond.
"A dazzling, phosphorescent work of art." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"This is a novel that draws together baseball, the Bomb, J. Edgar Hoover, waste disposal, drugs, gangs, Vietnam, fathers and sons, comic Lenny Bruce and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It also depicts passionate adultery, weapons testing, the care of aging mothers, the postwar Bronx, '60s civil rights demonstrations, advertising, graffiti artists at work, Catholic education, chess and murder. There's a viewing of a lost Eisenstein film, meditations on the Watts Tower, an evening at Truman Capote's Black & White Ball, a hot-air balloon ride, serial murders in Texas, a camping trip in the Southwest, a nun on the Internet, reflections on history, one hit (or possibly two) by the New York mob and an apparent miracle. As DeLillo says and proves, 'Everything is connected in the end.'" -Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
"Underworld is an amazing performance, a novel that encompasses some five decades of history, both the hard, bright world of public events and the more subterranean world of private emotions. It is the story of one man, one family, but it is also the story of what happened to America in the second half of the 20th century." -The New York Times
"AstonishingA benchmark of twentieth-century fiction, Underworld is stunningly beautiful in its generous humanity, locating the true power of history not in tyranny, collective political movements or history books, but inside each of us." -Greg Burkman, The Seattle Times
"It's hard to imagine a way people might better understand American life in the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first than by reading Don DeLillo. The scale of his inquiry is global and historic His work is astounding, made of stealthy blessings it proves to my generation of writers that fiction can still do anything it wants." -Jennifer Egan, in her presentation of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
"Underworld is a page-turner and a masterwork, a sublime novel and a delight to read." -Joan Mellen, The Baltimore Sun
Industry Reviews
"There's pleasure on evey page of this pitch-perfect evocation of a half-century."--Malcolm Jones "Newsweek " "The book is an aria and a wolf-whistle of our half century. It contains multitudes."--Michael Ondaatje "Astonishing. A sprawling and spectacular look at a half-century in American life as seen through a series of multiple visions that come flashing into our consciousness in ways that are endlessly enlightening and awesome in their insights. DeLillo has raised literary standards to new highs here, and yet the book is a page-turner, a scene-stealer, a triumph of language that takes us everywhere we've never been."--Gay Talese "The profundity, the intricacy, the beauty of Underworld leaves me in a state of awe. It's one of a handful of novels that will come to define our culture in this century."--Bradford Morrow "Underworld's intellect, its view, its fabulous drama, its soul, its passion and compassion, and the beauty of the writing, just the size and generosity of it, are all of some spectacular high order. I can't imagine any writer reading it without complete admiration and a kind of gratitude, because if a book like that can be written in a culture like this, it's terrific for all of us."--Michael Herr "Underworld is magnificent book by an American master."--Salman Rushdie "Masterpieces teach you how to read them, and Underworld is no exception....Anastonishing piece of prose and a benchmark of twentieth-century fiction, Underworld is stunnigly beautiful in its generous humanity, locating the true power of history not in tyranny, collective political movements of history books, but inside each of us."--Greg Burkman "The Seattle Times " "Underworld is a page-turner and a masterwork, a sublime novel and a delight to read."--Joan Mellen "The Baltimore Sun "
