A darkly comic, razor-sharp exploration of modern life, media saturation and the fear of death in a world overwhelmed by information. At the heart of the novel is Jack Gladney, a professor of “Hitler Studies” at a small liberal arts college, who lives with his blended family in Middle America. On the surface, Jacks life appears stablemarked by academic success, domestic routines and the comfort of supermarket consumerism.

But beneath the ordinary buzz of suburban life, Jack and his wife Babette are haunted by an unnamed dread: the fear of death. When a mysterious chemical spillknown as “the Airborne Toxic Event”forces their community to evacuate, that fear becomes terrifyingly real. As Jacks obsession with mortality deepens, the novel descends into an absurd, haunting meditation on technology, identity and what it means to be human in an age of endless noise.

National Book Award Winner.