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Gravity's Rainbow is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon.
A lengthy, complex novel featuring a large cast of characters, the narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the "Schwarzgerät" ("black device") that is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000".
Traversing an immense range of knowledge, the novel transgresses boundaries between high and low culture, between literary propriety and profanity, and between science and speculative metaphysics.
Recognized immediately as a masterpiece[by whom?], the novel shared the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.[1] Although selected by the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a single passage involving coprophilia offended the other members of the Pulitzer board, who rejected the selection. No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction that year.[2] The novel was nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award for Best Novel.
TIME named the novel one of its "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels", a list of the best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 and it is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest American novels ever written.
