End Zone [Paperback]

USThe second novel by Don DeLillo, author ofWhite Noise(winner of the National Book Award) andZero K

At Logos College in West Texas, huge young men, vacuum-packed into shoulder pads and shiny helmets, play football with intense passion. During an uncharacteristic winning season, the perplexed and distracted running back Gary Harkness has periodic fits of nuclear glee; he is fueled and shielded by his fear of and fascination with nuclear conflict. Among oddly afflicted and recognizable players, the terminologies of football and nuclear war--the language of end zones--become interchangeable, and their meaning deteriorates as the collegiate year runs its course. In this triumphantly funny, deeply searching novel, Don DeLillo explores the metaphor of football as war with rich, original zeal.Don DeLillopublished his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written twelve novels, includingWhite Noise(1985) which won the National Book Award. It was followed byLibra(1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and byMao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

In 1997, he published the bestsellingUnderworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.