Libra (novel)
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Libra (1988) is a novel written by Don DeLillo. It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and the events that shaped the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
A paperback edition is still in print. New York: Penguin USA, 1991 ISBN 0140156046
The book takes the reader from Oswald's early days as a child, to his adolescent stint in the US Marine Corp, through his brief defection to the USSR and subsequent marriage to a Russian girl, and finally his family's return to the US and his role in the assassination of Kennedy.
In DeLillo's version of events the assassination of Kennedy is in fact a fake assassination attempt taken too far, instigated by disgruntled former CIA operatives who see it as the only way to guide the government to war on Cuba.
Oswald is portrayed as an odd, outcast of a man, whose overtly communist political views cause him difficulties fitting in to American society. He is not portrayed sympathetically, nor is he castigated; he is treated fairly in the novel, yet is not a character easy to attach to. He loves his wife, yet beats her; he dotes on his children yet he mistreats his mother. He is not shown to be a madman with absurd ideologies, but well-read and intelligent. He is perhaps naive and unfortunately a pawn easily manipulated by others.
Other characters are touched upon in the book, such as Win Everett, Lawrence Parmenter and Guy Banister, the chief conspirators of the assassination plot, and Nicholas Branch, a CIA agent of more recent times assigned the task of piecing together the disparate fragments of Kennedy's death.