Libra (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

DeLillo, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140156046 ISBN 13: 9780140156041

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1991

Synopsis

From the author of the National Book Award-winning novel White Noise comes 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.

About this title

About the Author

Don DeLillo has written seventeen novels, including White Noise, which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra, his bestselling novel about the assassination of President Kennedy; Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and the bestselling Underworld, which in 2000 won the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished work of fiction published in the prior five years. In 1999, DeLillo was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of freedom of the individual in society. His other books include the novels Cosmopolis, Falling Man, and Point Omega and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories. He has also written occasional essays and three stage plays. In 2010 DeLillo became the third author to receive the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. He was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2013.

From the Back Cover

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

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140156046
• ISBN 13: 9780140156041
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480