Cosmopolis

Cosmopolis is a 2003 speculative novel by Don DeLillo set in a near-future Manhattan. The narrative follows Eric Packer, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager, as he travels across the city in a heavily armored limousine during a single day of cascading financial and social chaos. The novel explores themes of wealth accumulation, technological mediation of reality, urban decay, and the fragility of financial systems through fragmented dialogue and stream-of-consciousness passages. DeLillo examines how digital networks and market forces shape human consciousness and urban space, presenting a dystopian vision of late capitalism where information flows faster than physical movement. The work is considered a prescient meditation on financial instability and the alienation of the ultra-wealthy, published just years before the 2008 financial crisis.