End Zone

A rich parody of the parallels between the jargon of football and the jargon of battle – and a touch of cold-war existentialism – makes this powerful novel as hilarious as it is relevant.

‘Nobody, it seems, could write better than this. No one could have a clearer vision of the micro-circuitry of post-modern life’ Evening Standard

Ostensibly, DeLillo’s blackly comic second novel is about Gary Harkness, a football player and student at Logos College, west Texas. During a season of unprecedented success, Gary becomes increasingly fixated on the threat of nuclear war. Both frightened and fascinated by the prospect, he listens to his team-mates discussing match tactics in much the same terms as generals might contemplate global conflict. But as the terminologies of football and nuclear war – the language of end zones – become interchanged, the polysemous nature of words emerges, and DeLillo forces us to see beyond the sterile reality of substitution. This clever and playful novel is a timeless and topical study of human beings’ obsession with conflict and confrontation.

‘Powerfully funny, oblique, testy, and playful, tearing along in dazzling cinematic spurts . . . A masterful novel’ Washington Post