Zero K

　　「我們出生時沒有選擇，但我們也該用這種方式死去？拒絕既定的命運，這難道不是身為人類的驕傲嗎？」

　　洛克哈特的父親羅斯是一位六十歲的億萬富翁，他的妻子馬蒂諾十分年輕，卻健康狀況不佳。羅斯投資了一項事業，這機構可以控制死亡，並保存身體直到未來生物醫學進步到可以用新科技，幫助這些保存的人體起死回生。當馬蒂諾決定參加這項計畫時，洛克哈特與父親，向馬蒂諾道了不確定的再見…。

　　生與死的問題，纏繞整部小說，也困擾著洛克哈特與父親。作者德里羅引誘人心的觀察，直探人類社會最禁忌的話題，成就出一部既感人又值得深思的小說。

　　The wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time—an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, a meditation on death, and an embrace of life

　　Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body.

　　“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?”

　　These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefen¬sible. Jeff, the book’s narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing “the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth.”

　　Don DeLillo’s seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world—terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague— against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, “the intimate touch of earth and sun.”