"Disturbing, provocative and darkly comic, Mao II reads, at once, as a sociological meditation on the perils of contemporary society, and as a kind of new-wave thriller" Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Bill Gray, a famous, reclusive novelist, emerges from his isolation when he becomes the key figure in an event staged to force the release of a poet hostage in Beirut. As Bill enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms, Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover - and Bill's. An extraordinary novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch -individualist, Mao II explores a world in which the novelist's power to influence the inner life of a culture now belongs to bomb-makers and gunmen. MORE PRAISE FOR MAO II "A work of fiction not merely astonishingly fitting for our times, but rich and rewarding for anyone wishing to understand them" Sunday Times "Full of marvels, both in its imagery and its language" Irish Times "This novel's a beauty. Delillo takes us on a breathtaking journey, beyond the official versions of our daily history, behind all easy assumptions about who we're supposed to be, with a vision as bold and a voice as eloquent and morally focused as any in American writing" Thomas Pynchon