White Noise

Don DeLillo

White Noise

Winner of the National Book Award

Picador 40th Anniversary Edition

 

Celebrating 40 years of outstanding international writing, Picador reissues twelve essential novels

‘An extraordinarily funny book on a serious subject, effortlessly combining social comedy, disaster, fiction and philosophy . . . hilariously, and grimly, successful’ Daily Telegraph

First published in 1985, White Noise won the National Book Award. It is now regarded as a classic of postmodern literature.

Jack Gladney is a pioneering professor in the field of Hitler Studies at the bucolic Midwestern College-on-the-Hill. Married five times, he has a brood of children and stepchildren with his current wife, Babette. Over the course of an absurd, tragic year, Jack and Babette will each be forced to confront the question that keeps them awake at night: who will die first?

In 2012 Picador celebrate our 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe. 

Discover more at picador.com/40

Don DeLillo, the critically acclaimed author of  novels such as Underworld, Mao II and White Noise amongst others, will receive the first Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction during the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival in September this year.

Rosanna Boscawen
 

Former long-standing Picador art director Gary Day-Ellison recalls the innovative spirit of Picador, and how it led to one of the first book designs of its kind.

Rosanna Boscawen
 

On White Noise

‘I never set out to write an apocalyptic novel. It’s about death on the individual level. Only Hitler is large enough and terrible enough to absorb and neutralize Jack Gladney’s obsessive fear of dying—a very common fear, but one that’s rarely talked about. Jack uses Hitler as a protective device; he wants to grasp anything he can.’ 

New York Times Book Review, 13 January 1985

Rosanna Boscawen
 


Rosanna Boscawen
 

I was called a cult writer in the 70s, when that meant that very few people were reading me.