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