The Silence: DeLillo returns with another snapshot of a glazed, automated world

The veteran American writer is on familiar ground with his latest novel, but still displays his mastery of the form

Don DeLillo delivers the flashes of penetrating brilliance that we’ve come to expect from him. Photo: Getty

FICTION

The Silence

By Don DeLillo

Picador, €16.99

The fact that Don DeLillo’s new book is about society being irrevocably disrupted makes it sound timely, even prescient. But this is definitely a pre-Covid-19 novel.

While our “new normal” sees us more reliant on technology than ever, the characters in The Silence inhabit a world where all technology abruptly cuts out. Plunged into darkness on Super Bowl Sunday, five New York inhabitants try to make sense ...