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The Names

Published
Sep 1982
Main Genre
General Fiction General Fiction
Rating
Pages
339

About This Book

Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neurotic narrator obsessed with his own neuroses. A thriller, a mystery, and still a moving examination of family, loss, and the amorphous and magical potential of language itself, The Names stands with any of DeLillo's more recent and highly acclaimed works.

"The Names not only accurately reflects a portion of our contemporary world but, more importantly, creates an original world of its own."--Chicago Sun-Times

"DeLillo sifts experience through simultaneous grids of science and poetry, analysis and clear sight, to make a high-wire prose that is voluptuously stark."--Village Voice Literary Supplement

"DeLillo verbally examines every state of consciousness from eroticism to tourism, from the idea of America as conceived by the rest of the world to the idea of the rest of the world as conceived by America, from mysticism to fanaticism."--New York Times

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Formats & Editions

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Paperback

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Paperback
Sep 1983 Vintage ISBN 0394715640
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Trade Paperback
Mar 1987 Picador (UK) ISBN 0330297511
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Jul 1989 Vintage ISBN 0679722955
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Trade Paperback
Mar 2011 Picador ISBN 0330524860
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Paperback
Nov 2022 Pan Books (UK) ISBN 1529092108
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Hardcover

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Hardcover
First Edition Sep 1982 Knopf ISBN 039452814X
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eBook

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eBook
Apr 2012 Vintage ISBN B007M2ADCO
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eBook
Apr 2012 Knopf ISBN 0307817180
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eBook
Apr 2012 Picador ISBN 1447207211
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eBook
Apr 2012 Picador ISBN 1743282478
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Audio

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May 2017 Simon & Schuster Audio ISBN B06XR3HF2W
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Sep 2017 Macmillan Digital Audio ISBN B074KKGMTL
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