Underworld cover art

Underworld

 Preview
This Season's Biggest Deal

£0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

Auto-renews at £5.99/month after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 28 December, 2026.
More purchase options

Underworld

By: Don DeLillo
Narrated by: Richard Poe
Get this deal

Auto-renews at £5.99/mo. after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 28 December, 2026.

Buy Now for £23.64

Buy Now for £23.64

This Season's Biggest Deal | £0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly
Summary
 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
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
First class performance from Richard Poe. His deep steady voice, with its myriad of subtle shifts of accent and character made this audiobook head and shoulders the best I've heard in several years of Audible membership.
Helped of course by the high quality of the novel itself - an elegy for America in the second half of of the twentieth century, despite the seedy, sordid glimpses of its underbelly.

Riveting audio experience!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the end the tapestry comes together enough to give a sense of scale, the encompassing of so much Americana. The characterisation doesn't invite any particular affection, and so the passing of chapters and indeed the whole novel doesn't merit any yearning.
The writing is nevertheless mastery and the narration expert.

Sprawling 20th century epic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews