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Underworld

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About this listen

 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Howell’s Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

“A great American novel” (San Francisco Chronicle) that spans five decades of American history, following the intimate lives of the men and women who lived through them.

It begins with a moment of legend: the 1951 baseball game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers in which the winning homerun known as the Shot Heard Round the World coincides with news of the Soviet Union’s first hydrogen bomb test.

The baseball itself, scuffed and passed from hand to hand, becomes the thread that weaves an astonishing tapestry that spans the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam protests, and beyond, telling the story of Nick Shay, Klara Sax, and the hidden histories of a nation both haunted and illuminated by its past.

Sweeping yet intimate, Underworld is an astonishing story of men and women brought together and torn apart against the backdrop of half a century of American history. Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sports Funny Thought-Provoking
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This is my first read, and this book is a trip and a half. How it slowly unfurls but backwards is like completely amazing, a very sad, brutal and paranoia inducing book with red herrings dotted in it, but a resounding resolute triumph if you stick to the very end. A great thought provoking book, I will be sure to check out more of Don Dellilo. Great performance very funny and quite relaxing haha :)

Insane

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A prescient novel that documents the years it covers. DeLillo's easy style grips you from page 1. His brilliant depiction of Post-War USA is heartfelt, but satire and irony is never far from the pages. A Collosal book with terrific narration. If USA can be understood DeLillo is the man for the job.

A Tour de Force

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I bought this audiobook after reading reviews of the book as one of the great American novels and listening to people on radio book programmes praise it. I too can appreciate the ideas, the writing - but it made me think of Joyce's Ulysses and how difficult and tedious that it is except as an intellectual exercise. My attention kept wandering and I lost the plot - well, hardly the plot as there isn't one - but I lost track. And I found it depressing, undoubtedly an insight into American culture that is perceptive and accurate but a nevertheless depressing one. I haven't finished it. I hope to return to it when I'm feeling stronger. And the sun is shining. Maybe I'l Ill try the book itself - however good the reader, his cadence and inflexion have a great effect on how the listener perceives the book and this reader has a style of falling away at the end of a sentence.

Appreciated not enjoyed

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A hugely ambitious, gorgeously written novel that seems to aim for the entire 20th century history of America as a backdrop. There are some memorable plot lines and characters, and some that I lost track of completely. At times I just enjoyed the ebbing, soothing beauty of the prose without really having a clue who or what was happening.

Rambling brilliance

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This book had me totally engrossed for start to finish. As an English woman with only average knowledge of American recent history, I was amazed at how many of the cultural references I understood. Thoroughly entertaining, thought-provoking and brilliantly descriptive. Highly recommended.

Knocked my socks off

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