Cyber apocalypse: The Silence, by Don DeLillo, reviewed

Elaborated over a writing career that spans half a century — a career crowned with every honour save the Nobel Prize — Don DeLillo’s great project has been to explore a world where paranoia is not only warranted but healthy, a sane response to imminent threat, man-made or otherwise. He didn’t win the Nobel again this year, and may never, but his literary stature remains colossal. He’s revered as a writer and also as a prophet, a bard who sings our future into being.

His very short, bracingly bleak new novel The Silence is DeLillo distilled. Anyone who doesn’t like the taste will find it unendurable; for fans it’s a straight shot of the good stuff.

The first scene is wholly static: a couple buckled up in their seats on a plane bringing them home from Paris to New York. Bored, exhausted, unable to sleep, the man, Jim, begins to recite the information on the screen:

‘Okay.