Cosmopolis

Cosmopolis is a novel by the American writer Don DeLillo, published in 2003. It was his thirteenth novel, and it takes place over a single day in New York.

Eric Packer is an asset manager who has made a bet against the yen that is either going to ruin him or make him one of the wealthiest people alive, and he intends to be driven across the city while it resolves. The limousine is armoured and lined with screens and monitors, floored with marble and insulated from the sound of the street, so the journey is conducted from inside a capsule that he has paid to make impermeable and that he keeps leaving.

The day is a series of interruptions. People come to the car to talk to him about security, technology, currency and theory; a presidential visit, a demonstration and the funeral procession of a rapper stop the traffic; he meets his wife several times by accident and other women deliberately. The novel is short, cold and comic, and it is built around the question of what remains to be understood by a man who can afford to measure everything.