The Island, Chapter 1 Summary

The Names by Don DeLillo is a spiritual thriller that follows an American businessman, James Axton, as he becomes embroiled in a string of ritual murders in Greece and the Middle East. The book is a tragicomic meditation on the changing political and spiritual landscape of the international community at the beginning of the 1980s.

The novel begins with James Axton driving in Athens with a group of a American colleagues. They discuss the fact that James has yet to see the Acropolis. Charles Maitland reprimands him for his senseless dithering, but Ann Maitland understands. This coterie of international businesspeople is conjoined by their mutual knowledge of the ways of the ever-more dangerous world.

James takes a boat to Kouros, a small island where his estranged wife Kathryn lives with his son Tap. Kathryn is an archeologist working on...