Mao IIA Novel

Written in the shadow of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Mao II is DeLillo’s stinging rebuke to those who claim that novels have lost their relevance in an age of TV, film, the Internet, and terrorism. The book involves Bill Gray, a reclusive, celebrated novelist with a severe case of writer’s block. Filled with fear that terrorists have taken over the writer’s job of making “raids on consciousness,” Gray gets a chance to banish his demons when he volunteers to negotiate with a Middle Eastern terrorist group that has kidnapped a writer. A stirring deconstruction and juxtaposition of art and terror, Mao II is DeLillo’s examination of the reliance of each on public figures, be it terrorists in adulation to Osama bin Laden or fervent readers, critics, and publishers dedicated to their favorite author. Frequently provocative and never dull, Mao II remains relevant and timely for DeLillo’s artful probing of this tense, uncertain relationship between masses and their leader. He reveals some frightening commonalities between the highs of art and the lows of demagogues — as well as what will never be reconciled between them.