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On 3 October 1951 Bobby Thomson hit the home run at the Polo Grounds in New York that won the Giants the pennant. The next morning's New York Times put it on the front page beside news of a Soviet nuclear test, and Don DeLillo built the opening of Underworld (1997) on that pairing. He was born in the Bronx in 1936 into an Italian-American family, wrote advertising copy at Ogilvy & Mather until 1964, and has since published seventeen novels under his own name, from Americana (1971) to The Silence (2020). White Noise, with its ‘airborne toxic event’, won the National Book Award in 1985; Libra (1988) imagined the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. In 2025 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. The ten writers below share his material: crowds, screens, conspiracies, and the fear running under ordinary American life.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Postmodern fiction · Media and paranoia · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
If you like Don DeLillo, start with Thomas Pynchon, his closest contemporary in the American conspiracy novel, who published Shadow Ticket in 2025. For the media-soaked dread of White Noise, read J. G. Ballard; for the spare sentences and politics of Libra, read Joan Didion's novels. Further down are younger novelists who work in his line, and one whose famous essay on the point of fiction draws on a letter from DeLillo.
10 authors like Don DeLillo
Where to start if you loved Don DeLillo
If you want the paranoid epic, read Thomas Pynchon.
The Crying of Lot 49: a short, comic way into the conspiracy novel.
If you want White Noise made colder, read J. G. Ballard.
High-Rise: a modern tower block falls apart from the inside.
If you want the politics of Libra, read Joan Didion.
Democracy: power, secrets and one family at the end of the Vietnam War.
If you want a newer writer in his line, read Rachel Kushner.
The Flamethrowers: art, speed and radical politics in the 1970s.
If you have only read White Noise, try Libra (1988).
DeLillo's novel about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the best step before the length of Underworld.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Don DeLillo
Who writes like Don DeLillo?
Thomas Pynchon is his closest contemporary, and J. G. Ballard and Joan Didion work similar ground in Britain and California. Rachel Kushner, Tom McCarthy, Ben Lerner and Jenny Offill are younger novelists in the same line.
What should I read after White Noise?
J. G. Ballard's High-Rise (1975) for modern life going wrong, or Jenny Offill's Weather (2020) for dread at home. DeLillo's own Libra (1988) is the best next book by him.
Is Don DeLillo like Thomas Pynchon?
Both write about conspiracy, systems and the Cold War, and both are central to postmodern American fiction. Pynchon is more comic and baroque; DeLillo's sentences are sparer.
Does Don DeLillo have a new book?
His most recent novel is The Silence (2020), a short book set during a sudden technological blackout. In 2025 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction.
Which Don DeLillo book should I read first?
White Noise (1985) is the usual starting point and won the National Book Award. Libra (1988) comes next; Underworld (1997) is his longest and most ambitious novel.
What is Underworld about?
It follows the baseball from Bobby Thomson's 1951 home run alongside the life of Nick Shay, a waste-management executive, across the Cold War. The prologue first appeared as ‘Pafko at the Wall’ in Harper's in 1992.
Sources
List last reviewed 31 October 2026.
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