Dedicated to Don DeLillo, and interestingly parallel to DeLillo's Mao II, released only a year earlier, which also deals with terrorism and the social and political role of writers. This is one of Auster's finer works. It delves into the dark, disillusioned (and disillusioning) side of Americana and commodity that DeLillo has repeatedly mined, while also revisiting the familiar Austerian themes of mysterious coincidence, the action of writing, and interconnectedness.