James Axton is an American risk analyst living among bankers, diplomats and corporate expatriates in Athens, estranged from his archaeologist wife and increasingly uncertain of what his work conceals.

Across Greece and the Middle East, a series of ritual murders appears to follow an obscure linguistic pattern: each victim’s initials correspond to the name of the place where they are killed. James becomes fascinated by the secretive cult responsible and follows its traces into a landscape of ancient languages, multinational money and political violence. DeLillo places archaeology beside espionage, marriage beside geopolitics and the violence of the cult beside the quieter abstractions of corporate power. 

Published in 1982, this was DeLillo’s seventh novel and is often identified as the book in which his mature work fully emerged, immediately preceding White Noise. Geoff Dyer later called it a “prophetic, pre-9/11 masterpiece”: a novel of terrorism, American power and global networks written before those subjects acquired their now-familiar shape.

Vintage Books edition, later printing. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1982; this edition first issued in 1989. Paperback. Very good condition, with minor shelf wear.