Books › The Silence
The Silence
128 pages
A prescient, philosophical exploration of humanity stripped of its digital connections during a sudden catastrophe.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like sitting in a Manhattan apartment as the world quietly shifts on its axis. The mood is both bewildering and mysteriously solacing, wrapping the reader in a dystopian atmosphere where sudden electric power failures sever our digital lifelines. Driven by dazzling, philosophical conversation rather than action, the steady narrative explores what makes us human when the technology that defines our lives vanishes. The prose is illuminating and imaginative, capturing the prescient anxiety of stressful life events and catastrophic change. It is a profoundly moving experience designed for readers who crave intellectual, dialogue-heavy fiction that serves as an immediate guide to navigating a suddenly unrecognizable world.
- Mood
- bewildering
- dystopian
- mysterious
- solacing
- Tone
- philosophical
- prescient
- moving
- illuminating
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- digital disconnection · human nature · catastrophic change · technological dependence
- The writing
- Imaginative and illuminating, driven by dazzling, philosophical dialogue.
- The arc
- Moves from a casual, intellectual gathering into a profoundly moving and bewildering confrontation with sudden isolation.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate prescient, dialogue-driven dystopian fiction that questions what makes us human.
Content notes
- catastrophic events
- power failures
- stressful life events
About the book
Don DeLillo completed this novel just weeks before the advent of COVID-19. The Silence is the story of a different catastrophic event. Its resonances offer a mysterious solace. It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them after what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in north-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity. Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed. What follows is a dazzling and profoundly moving conversation about what makes us human. Never has the art of fiction been such an immediate guide to our navigation of a bewildering world. Never have DeLillo's prescience, imagination and language been more illuminating and essential. --
Description from Open Library.
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