Zero K - by Don Delillo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book

A New York Times bestseller, "DeLillo's haunting new novel, Zero K--his most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, Underworld" (The New York Times), is a meditation on death and an embrace of life.

Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say "an uncertain farewell" to her as she surrenders her body.

"We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn't it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?" These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the book's narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing "the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth."

Don DeLillo's "daring...provocative...exquisite" (The Washington Post) new novel weighs the darkness of the world--terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague--against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, "the intimate touch of earth and sun."

"One of the most mysterious, emotionally moving, and rewarding books of DeLillo's long career" (The New York Times Book Review), Zero K is a glorious, soulful novel from one of the great writers of our time.

Review Quotes

"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"

"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"

"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"

"Zero K pushes its readers to feel. It is almost impossible to not. With its confluence of screens, strange artwork, empty rooms, long hallways, and shaved hands of those soon to be frozen, Zero K creates an experiment, and we, its subjects, feel pulled to interact."-- "The Millions"

"Zero K stands as the best of [DeLillo's] recent work. . . . The intense, penetrating DeLillo sentences are still here, but now with a touch of Beckett to wax their warp. DeLillo turns 80 in November, and Zero K is still years ahead of the rest of us."-- "Hal Hlavinka, Brooklyn Paper"

"[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"

"A brilliant writer putting his prose mastery on display . . . . [with] thoughtfulness and dazzling construction."-- "Allen Adams, Maine Edge"

"A profound and deeply moral book."-- "Ann Levin, Associated Press"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"Brave and bracing . . . sure to solidify [DeLillo's] reputation as one of the great American novelists of our time."-- "Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel"

"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"

"Brisk and affecting as a Teflon-coated bullet."-- "Philip Martin, Arkansas Online"

"Daring... provocative... exquisite... captures the swelling fears of our age."-- "Ron Charles, Washington Post"

"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"

"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"

"Elegant written . . . Soaringly eloquent."-- "Doug Clifton, Miami Herald"

"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"

"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"

"In Zero K, Don DeLillo has found the perfect physical repository for his oracular visions. . . . His vision is ironic, sere, crackling with static like a horror film."-- "Nathaniel Rich, New York Review of Books"

"Juxtaposing . . . everyday human observation with more cosmic considerations, DeLillo creates a range of experience that is often dazzling."-- "Dale Singer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch"

"Like a stethoscope, Don DeLillo's work can make the heartbeat of your life roar in your ears. . . . In Zero K, DeLillo doesn't give the reader much room to suspend disbelief. With very deliberate words the novel wants to turn our eyes back to the artificial realities that we've allowed to colonize our lives. Our only chance, his fiction implies, is to define them, to master them with language -- lest we continuously be defined by our technology." -- "Chris Byrd, B&N 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"

"Magnificent, mesmerizing, major, and mystical. . . . This terrific novel unsettles, disturbs and undermines conventional notions and holds our contemporary existence up for examination."-- "Sam Coale, Providence Journal"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

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

"Reveals itself as perhaps the author's most fully animated exploration of human feeling."-- "Andrew Martin, Vice"

"The novel's brilliance escalates sharply as it proceeds. By the end, it is absolute."-- "Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News"

"The sentences shimmer like specimens in laboratory jars and the characters flicker like ghosts, but at its core the novel is trying to balance the atrocities and sufferings of life with its small, human pleasures: walking down a street, checking your wallet, starting a conversation with a stranger." -- "Stav Sherez, Catholic Herald"

"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"

"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"

"Wonderful."-- "Nelson Appell, Missourian"

"Wonderfully imagined, intellectually kinetic."-- "Walton Muyumba, Newsday"

"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"

"Zero K is as creepy as it sounds. But it's also consistently funny, in DeLillo's well-honed deadpan style. And the moral questions DeLillo deftly ponders in this masterly work of fiction may soon be more than hypothetical."-- "Andrew Travers, Aspen Times Weekly"

"Zero K stands as the best of [DeLillo's] recent work. . . . The intense, penetrating DeLillo sentences are still here, but now with a touch of Beckett to wax their warp. DeLillo turns 80 in November, and Zero K is still years ahead of the rest of us."-- "Hal Hlavinka, Brooklyn Paper"

About the Author

Don DeLillo is the author of seventeen novels including Underworld, Zero K, Libra, and White Noise, and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda, a finalist for the Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has also written plays and essays. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 2025, the Academy's Gold Medal for Fiction. DeLillo has been awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.