A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $19.90

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.48

  Dave Egger's parents died from cancer within a month of each other when he was 21 and his brother, Christopher, was seven. They left the Chicago suburb where they had grown up and moved to San Francisco. This book tells the story of their life together.

  'Dave Eggers has written a superb memoir... The work soars because it is, simply and tremendously, an honest and moving account of one man's life. In the process, he reminds me that while the language and style of literature are always changing, it is forever about coming to terms with the timeless conflicts of the human heart...Like all authors, he uses his life and imagination to make sense of the world. Like the very best writers, he does not manufacture cheap answers.'

  The News & Observer

  'The story is at once funny, tender, annoying and, yes, heartbreaking - an epic about family and how families fracture and fragment and somehow, through all the tumult and upset, manage to endure . . . 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, New York Times

  'Eggers is an original new voice, the real thing. When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once - and powerfully' David Remnick

  'The force and energy of this book could power a train' David Sedaris

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $3.48

  Dave Eggers's parents died from cancer within a month of each other when he was twenty-one and his brother, Christopher, was seven. They left the Chicago suburb where they had grown up and moved to San Francisco. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius tells the story of their life together.

  'The story is at once funny, tender, annoying and, yes, heartbreaking - an epic about family and how families fracture and fragment and somehow, through all the tumult and upset, manage to endure . . . 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, New York Times

  'Eggers is an original new voice, the real thing. When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once - and powerfully'

  David Remnick

  'The force and energy of this book could power a train' David Sedaris

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $13.49

  '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' Anthony Quinn, 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, Irish Times '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, New York Times 'Exhilarating ...Profoundly moving, occasionally angry and often hilarious ...A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is, finally, a finite book of jest, which is why it succeeds so brilliantly' -- New York Times Book Review 'What is really shocking and exciting is the book's sheer rage. AHWOSG 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 'A hilarious book ...In it, literary gamesmanship and self-consciousness are trained on life's most unendurable experience, used to examine a memory too scorching to stare at, as one views an eclipse by projecting sunlight onto paper through a pinhole' -- Time 'Eggers evokes the terrible beauty of youth like a young Bob Dylan, frothing with furious anger ...He takes us close, shows us as much as he can bear ...His book is a comic and moving witness that transcends and transgresses formal boundaries' -- Washington Post