The Names

Don DeLillo's 1982 novel follows James Axton, an American risk analyst whose work for a multinational firm takes him through Greece and the Middle East. His marriage is over, though his estranged wife Kathryn and their six-year-old son, a budding novelist, remain part of his life. Owen, a scientist, is another figure in the story, and Axton himself is a narrator preoccupied with his own anxieties.

The book blends the feel of a mystery and a thriller with a more reflective inquiry into family, grief and the strange power of language. Its characters are unusual but vividly drawn, and the novel sits comfortably alongside DeLillo's later celebrated work. Reviewers praised how it moves between science and poetry, and how it turns over ideas about mysticism, fanaticism, tourism and the way America and the rest of the world see one another.