A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
21 May 2026Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
A number one New York Times Bestseller
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college student who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. This exhilarating debut, at once hilarious and wildly inventive, reinvented the memoir for the twenty-first century.
‘Virtuosic’ – The New York Times
‘Prodigious’ – The Irish Times
‘Shocking’ – The London Review of Books
‘Moving’ – The Washington Post
Details
21 May 2026
9781035060276Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Heartbreaking? Certainly. Staggering? Yes, I'd say so. And if genius is capturing the universal in a fresh and memorable way, call it that too
Is this how all orphans would speak – "I am at once pitiful and monstrous, I know" – if they had Dave Eggers's prodigious linguistic gifts? For he does write wonderfully, and this is an extremely impressive debut
What is really shocking and exciting is the book's sheer rage. A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius is truly ferocious, like any work of genius. Eggers - self-reliant, transcendent, expansive - is Emerson's ideal Young American. [The book] does itself justice: it is a settling of accounts. And it is almost too good to be believed
A virtuosic piece of writing, a big, daring, manic-depressive stew of a book that noisily announces the debut of a talented – yes, staggeringly talented – new writer
