American author Don DeLillo will release his new novel this May and it envisages a project designed to control death and preserve mortal remains.
Zero K tells the story of Ross Lockhart, a billonaire who contemplates the impending death of his younger wife who has a terminal illness.
He is an investor in a secretive project at a remote compound “where death is controlled and bodies are preserved until medical advances can restore individuals to improved lives.” Lockhart wants to use the technology to address his wife's condition.
“We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?” writes DeLillo in the book, which will be published next May, by publishers Scribner in the US and Picador in the UK.
Scribner describe the 288-page work as DeLillo’s “most powerful” since 1997’s Underworld, which is perhaps DeLillo's best-known book. White Noise, Libra and The Names are also much favoured DeLillo novels.
His novel Cosmopolis was adapted for a 2012 film, starring Robert Pattinson, directed by David Cronenburg.
The new novel has also been described by the veteran American critic Harold Bloom as “the culmination of what DeLillo can do” and a work that “touched what I would call the sublime.”
The New York born writer has won the National Book Award, the Jerusalem Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize and most recently the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for lifetime achievement in American literature.
Cover art courtesy of Scribner
