Americana - by Don Delillo (Paperback)

About the Book

At twenty-eight, David Bell is the American dream come true. He has fought his way to the top, surviving office purges and scandals to become a top television executive. David's world is made up of the images that flicker across America's screens, the fantasies that enthrall America's imagination. And then the dream--and the dream-making--become a nightmare. At the height of his success, David sets out to rediscover reality.

Book Synopsis

"DeLillo's swift, ironic, and witty cross-country American nightmare doesn't have a dull or an unoriginal line."--Rolling Stone

The first novel by Don DeLillo, author of the National Book Award-winning White Noise

At twenty-eight, David Bell is living the American Dream. He has fought his way to the top, becoming a top television executive who has captivated America's imagination through the images on their flickering screens.

At the height of his success, David becomes disillusioned with the realities of consumerism and mass media and sets out to rediscover reality--and himself. Camera in hand, he journeys across the country in a mad and moving attempt to capture and find meaning in America's past, present, and future.

Don DeLillo delivers a witty and incisive examination of Amerca's cultural heritage and the complexities of identity in this classic work of postmodernist literary fiction.

Review Quotes

Praise for Americana

"DeLillo's swift, ironic, and witty cross-country American nightmare doesn't have a dull or an unoriginal line."
--Rolling Stone

"Nearly every sentence of Americana rings true, an insistence upon the authenticity behind the stereotypes . . . DeLillo is a man of frightening perception."
--Joyce Carol Oates, The Detroit Sunday News

"There have been many--too-many--novels in which the protagonist tries to find himself: here is one in which he tries to lose himself."
--The New York Times

About the Author

Don DeLillo has written seventeen novels, including White Noise, which won the National Book Award. It was followed by Libra, his bestselling novel about the assassination of President Kennedy; Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and the bestselling Underworld, which in 2000 won the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most distinguished work of fiction published in the prior five years. In 1999, DeLillo was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of freedom of the individual in society. His other books include the novels Cosmopolis, Falling Man, and Point Omega and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories. He has also written occasional essays and three stage plays. In 2010 DeLillo became the third author to receive the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction. He was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2013.