Underworld

Underworld

Don DeLillo

#308 of 8,085 books · #161 in Fiction

Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award (1999), the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1998), the National Book Award for Fiction (1997), and 1 more award.

Underworld was a finalist for the National Book Award. Underworld is a story of men and women together and apart, seen in deep, clear detail and in stadium-sized panoramas, shadowed throughout by the overarching conflict of the Cold War. It is a novel that accepts every challenge of these extraordinary times. Don DeLillo's mesmerizing novel opens with a legendary baseball game played in New York in 1951. The glorious outcome -- the home run that wins the game is called the Shot Heard Round the World -- shades into the grim news that the Soviet Union has just tested an atomic bomb. With cameo appearances by Lenny Bruce, J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Thompson, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor, the novel follows its characters through the era.