Wishlist

Saved in this browser only - it isn't synced to your other devices.

Back to the full ranking

#312 of 8,085 books · #163 in Fiction

Won the National Book Award for Fiction (1985). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 1 other award.

How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? Jack Gladney is the creator and chairman of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. This is the story of his absurd life; a life that is going well enough, until a chemical spill from a train carriage releases an 'Airborne Toxic Event' and Jack is forced to confront his biggest fear - his own mortality. White Noise is an effortless combination of social satire and metaphysical dilemma in which Don DeLillo exposes our rampant consumerism, media saturation and novelty intellectualism. It captures the particular strangeness of life lived when the fear of death cannot be denied, repressed or obscured and ponders the role of the family in a time when the very meaning of our existence is under threat.

Buy this book at AmazonAd
Publisher
Picador
ISBN-13
9781529077261
Genre
Topics
Fear of deathConsumerism and media saturationFamily life

Other awarded books from Don DeLillo