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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers

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.

'Brilliant' – The Guardian
‘Virtuosic’ – The New York Times
‘Prodigious’ – The Irish Times
‘Shocking’ – The London Review of Books
‘Moving’ – The Washington Post

Details

15 December 2014
496 pages
9781447294429
Imprint: 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”The Sunday Times, The Sunday Times
“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”John Banville, The Irish Times
“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”London Review of Books, London Review of Books
“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”Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times