Mao II

Bill Gray is a famous novelist who has spent years away from public life, working on a book that never seems to end. Eventually he steps out of that stalled manuscript and into the darker world of political violence, a place of plastic explosives and captives held in cellar rooms. His choice sets off consequences for the people around him. His devoted and obsessive assistant, Scott, is left behind, as is a young woman tangled up in Scott's life and, unexpectedly, Bill's own.

The novel is a meditation on the power of words and pictures, on the figure of the writer, and on the pull between the crowd and the lone dissenter. Its characters move between the private and the political, and its concerns center on how individuals are absorbed into mass movements and what remains of the self in that process.

Don DeLillo is an American novelist whose work often explores media, celebrity and violence. Mao II was published in 1991.