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Libra

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About this listen

Don DeLillo's extraordinary Libra is a brilliant reimagining of the events and people surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Shots ring out. A president dies. And a nation is plunged into psychosis . . .

Concentrating on the lives of Lee Harvey Oswald, some rogue former spooks unhappy with Kennedy's presidency, and Nicholas Branch, a CIA archivist, trying to make sense of or draw inferences from the mass of information after the assassination, Libra presents an apologetically provocative picture of America in the second half of the last century.

 Crime Thrillers Espionage Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Political Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Fiction

Critic reviews

An unparalleled trip into the heart of America
Wonderful
Even with all the swirling contradictory data, this you feel is America, and the news starts here
Monumental, DeLillo at his chilling best. Concentrates on the inner life of the people who shaped the Kennedy assassination. He constructs the very human faces behind a monstrous event, creating fiction which trespasses on reality
An audacious blend of fiction and fact
All stars
Most relevant
A mesmerising story that gravitates towards its fatal conclusion, drawing you along with it.

DeLillo’s genius for evoking an atmosphere is perfect here for delivering a sense of the event as something with its own radial logic and inertia.

Like other reviewers, I was initially unsure of the rather flat reading style, but came to see it as ideal for the story being told.

Line this one up and enjoy 👌🏼

Mesmerising

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Have a glimpse of humanity as a mechanism in time, composing itself towards a singular historical event, described at the scale of the individual moving parts.


You can FEEL the reverberation of distant workings as they reach you, move your life around. But perspective at the personal level is limited and the big truth of who exactly made what happen and how and why can only be suspected.


But it's not just the story, it's the writing, impossibility beautiful, singing us in harmonies about harmonies.


Also the narrator: imagine tuning in to a news report of the period, his cadence is alien at first but when you get used to it, his voice is right. Maybe he quit the news desk after having to report on the Kennedy assassination, but resurfaced to narrate just this story as a personal favour to history.

Profound and elevated

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the narrator was really engaging. one of the best adaptations of the JFK assassination from a literary genius.

Beautiful and moving. Wonderful classic sound.

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