Zero K

“Mr. DeLillo’s haunting new novel, Zero K — his most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, Underworld — is a kind of bookend to White Noise: somber and coolly futuristic, where that earlier book was satirical and darkly comic. . . . . All the themes that have animated Mr. DeLillo’s novels over the years are threaded through Zero K — from the seduction of technology and mass media to the power of money and the fear of chaos. . . . like a chamber music piece. . . . reminds us of his almost Day-Glo powers as a writer and his understanding of the strange, contorted shapes that eternal human concerns (with mortality and time) can take in the new millennium.” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)

"One of the most mysterious, emotionally moving and formally rewarding books of DeLillo's long carer... Unexpectedly touching... [DeLillo offers] consolation simply by enacting so well the mystery and awe of the real world... I finished it stunned and grateful." (Joshua Ferris, The New York Times Book Review)

“Brilliant and astonishing… a masterpiece… full of DeLillo's amazing inimitable scalpel perceptions, fluent in the ideas we'll be talking about 20 years from now… ZERO K somehow manages to renew DeLillo's longstanding obsessions while also striking deeply and swiftly at the reader's emotions….The effect is transcendent.” (Charles Finch, Chicago Tribune)

“Daring... provocative... exquisite... captures the swelling fears of our age.” (Ron Charles, Washington Post)

“Among many delights, Don DeLillo’s extraordinary new novel offers a bracing revision of our certitude about death and taxes. . . . DeLillo has created a mysterious, funny, and profound book out of a cultural gag usually reliant on metal cylinders and dry ice. . . . ZERO K deserves to win old and new readers alike. It’s a marvelous blend of DeLillo’s enormous gifts. His bleak humor and edged insight, the alertness and vitality of his prose, the vast, poetic extrapolations are all evident. So is the visceral quickness and wit in the sentences. . . . This is one of the constant pleasures of a DeLillo novel, the talk, the shop talk, the comic talk, the cosmic talk, the way the characters feel language, its sonics, the moral and emotional pressures.” (Sam Lipsyte, BookForum)

“In this intriguing novel, Don DeLillo trains his intense and singular vision on a future where people with the imagination and resources to achieve it may succeed in rewriting [the necessity of death].” (Shelf Awareness)

"Among DeLillo's finest work... DeLillo sneaks a heartbreaking story of a son attempting to reconnect with his father into his thought-provoking novel." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

"Lush in thought and feeling... Intently observant and obsessively concerned with language and meaning, Jeffery is a mesmerizing and disquieting narrator as he describes the “eerie and disembodying” ambiance of the Convergence and its ritualized, morally murky amalgam of mysticism and science, from the “post-mortem décor,” punctuated by unnerving sculptures and violent cinematic montages, to the sarcophagus-pods containing naked, cryopreserved voyagers to the unknown... DeLillo infuses the drama with metaphysical riddles: What of ourselves can actually be preserved? What will resurrection pilgrims experience in their cold limbo? With immortality reserved for the elite, what will become of the rest of humanity on our pillaged, bloodied, extinction-plagued planet? In this magnificently edgy and profoundly inquisitive tale, DeLillo reflects on what we remember and forget, what we treasure and destroy, and what we fail to do for each other and for life itself... DeLillo reaffirms his standing as one of the world’s most significant writers." (Booklist, starred review)

“DeLillo homes in on what may be the ultimate—and deceptively simple—lesson of his novel, which is that in the end, the questions we ask about where death takes us are the same ones we ask about where life takes us.” (The Atlantic)

“Reveals itself as perhaps the author’s most fully animated exploration of human feeling.” (Andrew Martin, Vice)

"Resplendently insightful... an engrossing work of narrative art... rare and extraordinary." (Paul D'Agostino, Brooklyn Magazine)

“To reconcile . . . the fear of death that informs so many egregious acts . . . and the little everyday moments that make up so much of life — is the problem DeLillo takes up again and again, and the impossibility of it is what makes his work so powerful, so comical . . . and so fine.” (Beth Akins, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

“Elegant written . . . Soaringly eloquent.” (Doug Clifton, Miami Herald)

“Mr. DeLillo’s true brilliance has always been as a satirist. Despite its morbid subject, this is a terrifically funny novel.” (Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal)

"[DeLillo is] the master of the pre-apocalyptic novel, the chief literary mapper of the dehumanized places our current world may lead us. [He] is near the top of his game in Zero K." (Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News)

“DeLillo’s prose style has undergone a quickening. His sentences have always had a cascade effect, but lately their arc is steeper. Gravity has assumed more force. And [in Zero K] style and theme have something in common.” (Christian Lorentzen, New York Magazine)

“Zero K is science fiction of a kind that takes place five minutes from now and a novel of ideas that’s deeply emotional.” (Jeff Baker, Seattle times)

“The novel’s brilliance escalates sharply as it proceeds. By the end, it is absolute.” (Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News)

“Zero K demonstrates the electrifying possibilities of DeLillo’s approach. . . . This is speculative fiction in the present tense written with an ardent concentration and economy, no superfluous words, not even a wasted comma. At its best, DeLillo’s prose buzzes with the ambient hum of modernity, attuning the reader to a subliminal frequency, the hidden meanings of everyday objects and rituals.” (Keith Watson, Slant Magazine)

“A profound and deeply moral book.” (Ann Levin, Associated Press)

“Almost six decades into publishing fiction, this author has put up a fresh career landmark. . . . [DeLillo] has brought off something simple but disturbing, revealing both the perils of faith and the power of Gospel.” (John Domini, Philadelphia Inquirer)

“Wonderful.” (Nelson Appell, Missourian)

“Brave and bracing . . . sure to solidify [DeLillo’s] reputation as one of the great American novelists of our time.” (Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

“Handily [DeLillo’s] best book since 1997’s magnum opus Underworld . . . [Zero K] feels very much like a companion piece to White Noise. . . . It is a book that speaks to the vitality and beauty of life. . . . Zero K is DeLillo, and literature, and life, in reverse—a plot that originates in death and moves, with sly, subtle triumph, ever life-ward” (John Semley, Globe & Mail)

“Powerful. . . . Zero K may poke fun at life extension, but it gives us the warmest depicture of a DeLillo novel yet at the intimate reason for this perpetual Icarus complex. . . . the most powerful reason for this desire for transcendence is love, and as Zero K so poignantly reminds, love is one element that does not survive at subfreezing zero kelvin.” (John Freeman, Boston Globe)

“Zero K grapples with the fact our demise is profoundly at odds with this aspect of us that years to exceed every limitation. Circling around this irreconcilable dilemma, DeLillo finds a vital dialogue with his great work White Noise. It is this . . . that makes this book a provocative success.” (Scott Esposito, San Francisco Chronicle)

“Wonderfully imagined, intellectually kinetic.” (Walton Muyumba, Newsday)

“As ever, DeLillo explores the depths of an edgy, timely topic, completely resisting cliché, and emerges with something both fresh and universal.” (Maddie Crum, Huffington Post)

“There are deep, slicing currents running through Zero K, despite its almost ascetic surfaces, and there are unforgettable little moments scattered everywhere in these pages.” (Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor)

“A return to top form . . . . this compact tale has more ideas, argument, and speculation stuffed onto nearly every page than you might find in an entire shelf of sci-fi novels. . . . But Zero K is anchored in emotions as old and primal as humanity itself: the fear of death, the passionate love of a man for his wife, the conflicted love of a son for his father. These rich veins of feeling flow like an underground river through the novel’s eerie, futuristic terrain.” (Kevin Nance, USA Today, 4 Stars)

“A brilliant writer putting his prose mastery on display . . . . [with] thoughtfulness and dazzling construction.” (Allen Adams, Maine Edge)