O-Zone - Softcover

Theroux, Paul

3.29

734 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140099891 ISBN 13: 9780140099898

Publisher: penguin Books, 2001

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It's New year in paranoid, computer-rich New York, and a group of Owners has jet-rotored out to party in O-Zone. New York is a sealed city. Visits to the eerie, radioactive wasteland of O-Zone are now rarer than moon landings. The people dumped there, 'aliens', officially do not exist. For Hooper Allbright and Fizzy, Theroux's futuristic Robinson Crusoes, the trip sets in motion an adventure of undreamed-of desire and terror.

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From the Inside Flap:

able... Powerful... Mesmerizing... Lyrical."
Susan Cheever
Welcome to the America of the 21st century. The O-Zone is a forbidding land of nuclear waste, mutants, and aliens. Except for one place that is a beautiful oasis amidst the destruction. When two aliens are shot that look suspiciously human, Hooper Allbright, disurbed by the memories of those he once loved, goes back down into the O-Zone to try to reach the people he lost, though they may be unreachable by now....
"Smart, witty, grotesque, and brutal."
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

From Publishers Weekly:

Theroux's view of humanity is becoming increasingly bleak even as he stretches his reach with this novel that brilliantly depicts the world as it may become. In the not-too-distant future, America has turned into a police state and a rigidly class-obsessed, terrifyingly racist society. On the verge of anarchy, the country is fragmented into many chaotic parts. The Owners, the remnant elite who live in armed enclaves protected by fearsome security forces, feel menaced by aliensalso called Roaches, Trolls, Skells, Starkiesall those who lead desperate lives of poverty and despair. A group of eight Owners, including a near-genius adolescent, seek an adventurous thrill in a rocket trip to the forbidden area of the O-Zone, formerly the Ozarks, which has been sealed off following massive nuclear contamination. The experience changes all of them, and a second, secret voyage there has terrifying consequences. Theroux has vizualized every detail of his desolate, all-too-plausible world. His scathing social commentary is powerful and convincing; his characters, while too unappealing to win the readers' sympathy, etch themselves in the mind. This highly literate science fiction is not a pleasant book to read, but it is a significant contribution to the literature of what may be a preapocalyptic world.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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