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Mao II

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About this listen

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, Mao II is the work of an ingenious writer at the height of his powers.

Bill Gray, a famous, reclusive novelist, emerges from his isolation when he becomes the key figure in an event staged to force the release of a poet hostage in Beirut.

As Bill enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms, Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover – and Bill's.

An extraordinary novel from Don DeLillo about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist, Mao II explores a world in which the novelist's power to influence the inner life of a culture now belongs to bomb-makers and gunmen.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary Middle East

Critic reviews

A beauty. . . Delillo takes us on a breathtaking journey, beyond the official versions of our daily history, behind all easy assumptions about who we're supposed to be, with a vision as bold and a voice as eloquent and morally focused as any in American writing (Thomas Pynchon)
A work of fiction not merely astonishingly fitting for our times, but rich and rewarding for anyone wishing to understand them
All stars
Most relevant
The narrator's voice is quite flat and expressionless, which makes it slightly difficult to follow the conversation between characters as they all sound the same. This audio book is not divided by actual chapters, but is devided into sections of even time period.

brilliant story but deadpan performance

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