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    Ratner's Star

    Part of Vintage Contemporaries

    Author Don DeLillo
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    Paperback
    $20.00 US
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Jul 17, 1989 | 448 Pages | 9780679722922
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    One of DeLillo's first novels, Ratner's Star  follows Billy, the genius adolescent, who is recruited to live in obscurity, underground, as he tries to help a panel of estranged, demented, and yet lovable scientists communicate with beings from outer space. It is a mix of quirky humor, science, mathematical theories, as well as the complex emotional distance and sadness people feel. Ratner's Star demonstrates both the thematic and prosaic muscularity that typifies DeLillo's later and more recent works, like The Names (which is also available in Vintage Contemporaries).  

    "A mind-expanding trip to the finish line, and full of wit and slapstick as well.... The areas of knowledge central to Ratner's Star are astronomy and mathematics. DeLillo develops them brilliantly, so that the expert can wallow while even the layman can splash happily in the shallows or pick up pebbles on the shore."--The Washington Post Book World
    Don DeLillo is the author of sixteen novels, including Zero K, Underworld, Falling Man, White Noise, and Libra. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. The Angel Esmeralda was a finalist for the 2011 Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2012, DeLillo received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work. View titles by Don DeLillo
    "[DeLillo's] most spectacularly inventive novel." --The New York Times

    "A mind-expanding trip to the finish line, and full of wit and slapstick as well..." --Washington Post Book World 

    "Brilliantly...enormously ambitions.... Ratner's Star uses the story of an innocent's 'education' as the launching pad for a provocative, prodigious satire on those pioneers who journey beyond the frontiers of knowledge and end up more ignorant than they were when they set forth." --Chicago Tribune Book World

    "This red giant of a book...is not only interesting, but funny (in a nervous kind of way)." --The New York Times Book Review
     

    About

    One of DeLillo's first novels, Ratner's Star  follows Billy, the genius adolescent, who is recruited to live in obscurity, underground, as he tries to help a panel of estranged, demented, and yet lovable scientists communicate with beings from outer space. It is a mix of quirky humor, science, mathematical theories, as well as the complex emotional distance and sadness people feel. Ratner's Star demonstrates both the thematic and prosaic muscularity that typifies DeLillo's later and more recent works, like The Names (which is also available in Vintage Contemporaries).  

    "A mind-expanding trip to the finish line, and full of wit and slapstick as well.... The areas of knowledge central to Ratner's Star are astronomy and mathematics. DeLillo develops them brilliantly, so that the expert can wallow while even the layman can splash happily in the shallows or pick up pebbles on the shore."--The Washington Post Book World

    Author

    Don DeLillo is the author of sixteen novels, including Zero K, Underworld, Falling Man, White Noise, and Libra. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, and the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, he was awarded the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize. The Angel Esmeralda was a finalist for the 2011 Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2012, DeLillo received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for his body of work. View titles by Don DeLillo

    Praise

    "[DeLillo's] most spectacularly inventive novel." --The New York Times

    "A mind-expanding trip to the finish line, and full of wit and slapstick as well..." --Washington Post Book World 

    "Brilliantly...enormously ambitions.... Ratner's Star uses the story of an innocent's 'education' as the launching pad for a provocative, prodigious satire on those pioneers who journey beyond the frontiers of knowledge and end up more ignorant than they were when they set forth." --Chicago Tribune Book World

    "This red giant of a book...is not only interesting, but funny (in a nervous kind of way)." --The New York Times Book Review
     

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