The wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time—an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, 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 seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant 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.”
Zero K is glorious.
【作者简介】
唐·德里罗 Don DeLillo
出生于1936年，美国当代文学巨擘，诺贝尔文学奖热门候选人，哈罗德·布鲁姆所推崇的“美国当代最重要的四位作家之一”。著有《名字》《白噪音》《天秤星座》《地下世界》《零K》等。
德里罗的作品呈现出一种后现代的极限状态： 超现实、消费文化、媒体权力、集体狂热、恐怖主义直到世界末日……他以先知般的笔触，刻画着我们这个时代的魔力与恐惧，预言人类命运的终极。
唐·德里罗以“代表美国文学最高水准”的创作，赢得了美国国家图书终身成就奖、美国笔会/索尔·贝娄文学终身成就奖、耶路撒冷奖等十多种重量级文学奖项。
【译者简介】
靖振忠，青年译者。毕业于中国科学技术大学地球和空间科学系，获美国哥伦比亚大学物理学硕士。现居加拿大多伦多市。译有《零K》《索拉里斯星》等。