Rent Mao II

Synopsis

(1992 PEN/FAULKER AWARD)

In MAO II, Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist. At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence when he gets the chance to aid a hostage trapped in a basement in war-torn Beirut, a nightscape of Semtex explosives. Gray's dangerous departure leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover - and Bill's. MAO II is a series of set-pieces built around the theme of searching for meaning in a post-modern world.

'DeLillo's brilliant 10th novel...writing so piercingly exact, characters so palpable, dialogue so shimmering, that the ideas burn off like summer smoke and become skywriting.' (Philadelphia Inquirer)

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