Underworld, by Don DeLillo (Picador, £10.00 in UK)

Make no mistake about it - Don DeLillo proved himself to be one of the world's most exciting writers as long ago as the publication of his masterful study of displacement, The Names (1982), and has consolidated his reputation ever since with White Noise, Libra and the seriously underrated Mao II. This dazzling lament is a virtuoso performance of technique, narrative, dialogue and vision, a determinedly unsentimental attempt to remember, perhaps even revisit, the past without either celebrating or eulogising it. By juxtaposing two events - the baseball World Series clash of October 1951 between the Dodgers and the Giants, and the Cold War news of the first Soviet nuclear bomb test, DeLillo tracks American society, its paraonia, its icons and the prevailing themse of consumerism, weaponry, waste disposal, ethnic unrest and vital nuances. Despite its massive scale, this panoramic and ambitious work never relinquishes its humanity.