A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“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   “ 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.” — The New York Times Book Review   “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.” — The Washington Post   “[F]unny, wildly intelligent…. What’s consistent throughout is the full-throttle voice: the sensibility of the man who grieves his parents, who safeguards his brother, who knows that his own presence here can walk the line between ‘self-conscious’ and ‘self-devouring.” — The Boston Globe   “Eggers crafts something universal here, something raw and real and wonderful that transcends any zeitgeist and manages to deal trenchantly with ‘big issues’ that often prove too daunting for younger writers: mortality, youth the artifice of writing, the Zen of Frisbee. This is a beautifully ragged, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable book.” — San Francisco Chronicle Informationen zum Autor DAVE EGGERS is the author of many books, among them  The Circle, The Eyes and the Impossible, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King, What Is the What , and  The Museum of Rain . He is the cofounder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing and tutoring center which has inspired dozens of similar nonprofit organizations around the world, and the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publisher. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, and the American Book Award.  Klappentext "This is a beautifully ragged, laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable book." -San Francisco Chronicle National Bestseller Pulitzer Prize Finalist A book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read for decades to come. Leseprobe One Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic. Exhaust from the dryer billows clumsily out from the house and up, breaking apart while tumbling into the white sky. The house is a factory. I put my pants back on and go back to my mother. I walk down the hall, past the laundry room, and into the family room. I close the door behind me, muffling the rumbling of the small shoes in the dryer, Toph's. "Where were you?" my mother says. "In the bathroom," I say. "Hmph," she says. "What?" "For fifteen minutes?" "It wasn't that long." "It was longer. Was something broken?" "No." "Did you fall in?" "No." "Were you playing with yourself?" "I was cutting my hair." "You were contemplating your navel." "Right. Whatever." "Did you clean up?" "Yeah." I had not cleaned up, had actually left hair everywhere, twisted brown doodles drawn in the sink, but knew that my ...

Product details

• Authors: Dave Eggers
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 13.02.2001
• EAN: 9780375725784
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72578-4
• No. of pages: 496
• Dimensions: 131 mm x 203 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Vintage Pbk; Vintage Pbk
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies