Synopses & Reviews
A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche. In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from a troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. In his new introduction, DeLillo reexamines the evidence surrounding Oswald's role in the assassination as well as Oswald's place in popular culture. BACKCOVER: Now with a new introduction by the author a thriller of the most profound sort?
?Chicago Tribune
?Libra operates at a dizzyingly high level of intensity throughout; it's that true fictional rarity?a novel of admirable depth and relevance that's also a terrific page-turner.?
?USA Today
?DeLillo's novel is like a stop-motion frame of the crossfire, a still picture of an awful moment.... His] prose has a quality of demented lyricism.?
?The New Yorker
Review
"Don DeLillo's cold and brilliant novel begins with thirteen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother that American Medea, Marguerite watching television in the Bronx....DeLillo flies by night, and enters, an exorcist, into rooms and dreams. In each room, he finds a secret and a coincidence, a loneliness and a connection, even a kind of theology...But language is DeLillo's plastique. Out of gnarled speech, funny, vulgar, gnomic, he composes stunning cantatas for the damned to sing. Libra is as choral as it's cinematic." John Leonard
Review
"It's his best novel, because it goes right to the source to Dallas in November, 1963, the primal scene of American paranoia....DeLillo's portrait of Oswald is unexpectedly touching. It's what gives Libra the full heat of feeling....For the first time, DeLillo's work has the incendiary concentration of great fiction: his writing about Oswald is a long fuse that seems to lead straight to the heart of things." Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
Review
"....[T]ragic and dramatic as are the catastrophes of the great classical tragedies, but with an entirely American twist." Charles McGrath, The New York Time Books of the Century
Review
"Libra is, in fact, another conspiracy theory, although considerably more literate and entertaining than most....Given {his} preoccupations, it was probably inevitable...that DeLillo would get around to the assassination, that nexus of paranoia." Paul Gray, Time
Review
"One is dazzled by the virtuosity of Libra's construction, by the pungency and ellipses of the dialogue, and by the descriptive brilliance with which the lowlife characters materialize before one's eyes....Libra should be read for the boldness of its enterprise, its unflagging liveliness of surface and pacing, the engaging idiosyncrasy of its style, and, above all, for its vision of an outlaw element in American life devoted to the well-oiled mechanism of sudden death." Robert Towers, The New York Review of Books
Synopsis
In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.
A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.
Synopsis
From the author of White Noise (winner of the National Book Award) and Zero K In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of
John F. Kennedy,
Don DeLillo chronicles
Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.
A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.
Synopsis
From the author of White Noise (winner of the National Book Award) and The Silence, an eerily convincing fictional speculation on the events leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy In this powerful, unsettling novel, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When history presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.
A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.
Synopsis
Now with a new introduction by the authora thriller of the most profound sort
Chicago Tribune
Libra operates at a dizzyingly high level of intensity throughout; its that true fictional raritya novel of admirable depth and relevance thats also a terrific page-turner.
USA Today
DeLillos novel is like a stop-motion frame of the crossfire, a still picture of an awful moment.... [His] prose has a quality of demented lyricism.
The New Yorker
Synopsis
In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of
John F. Kennedy,
Don DeLillo chronicles
Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.
A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.
About the Author
Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, including
White Noise (1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed by
Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by
Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
In 1997, he published the bestselling Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.