- A profound novel about art, terror, masses, and the individual, from the National Book Award-winning author of White Noise, "one of the most ironic, intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America" (The New York Times)

"This novel's a beauty. A vision as bold and a voice as eloquent and morally focused as any in American writing."--Thomas Pynchon

Bill Gray, a famous, reclusive novelist, emerges from his isolation when he becomes the key figure in an event staged to force the release of a poet hostage in Beirut. As Bill enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms, his dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover--and Bill's.

An extraordinary novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist, Mao II is the work of an ingenious writer at the height of his powers.