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Reading lists

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The Parade

From the bestselling author of The Circle and The Monk of Mokha comes a taut, suspenseful story of two foreigners' role in a nation's fragile peace. 
 
'Tightly written, carefully designed to wrong-foot preconceptions, and astute . . . An intensely gripping story' Evening Standard 
 
An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of a decade at war, and to commemorate the armistice the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state. 
 
Two men, foreign contractors from the same company, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and adventurous, wanting to experience the nightlife and people, the other wants only to do the work and go home. But both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence. 
 
With echoes of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene, this timeless novel questions whether we can ever understand another nation's war, and what role we have in forging anyone's peace. 
 
'Certainly his best book since What is the What... The sound of a major writer finding his mature voice' Spectator

Tightly written, carefully designed to wrong-foot preconceptions, and astute... An intensely gripping story

Certainly his best book since What is the What, The Parade may well be the sound of a major writer finding his mature voice

A parable of progress, as told by J.M. Coetzee to Philip K. Dick

The Parade is a heartbreaker and a mindbender. It is a novel of ideas that packs an emotional punch that left me reeling. With clear, unadorned prose, Eggers lays bare the costs of war, and of peace

This is a tale for our time, an allegory about intervening in foreign lands without knowledge, and so a nightmare vision of our endless wars.

In The Parade, the anxiety grows with every page and every mile to reach an ending that turns everything upside down and sends us into the heart of darkness. A minimalistic, merciless novel. A powerful allegory and a painfully concrete contemporary story-Eggers is a true virtuoso of that synthesis.

Wide-ranging and thoughtful engagement with concepts of power and inequality and whether Western notions of what constitutes 'progress' are always right

It partakes of a complex of anxieties about America's role as an affluent superpower of dubious virtue

Egger's commitment to social and political issues continues

Dave Eggers is the author of twelve books, including The Monk of Mokha; The Circle; Heroes of the Frontier; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; and What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France's Prix Médicis Etranger. 
 
He is the founder of McSweeney's and the cofounder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired similar programs around the world, and of ScholarMatch, which connects donors with students to make college accessible. He is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and is the cofounder of Voice of Witness, a book series that illuminates human rights crises through oral history. 
 
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letter. His work has been translated into forty- two languages. 
 
www.Internationalcongressofyouthvoices.org 
www.826valencia.org 
www.scholarmatch.org 
www.voiceofwitness.org 
www.valentinoachakdeng.org 
www.mcsweeneys.net 
www.daveeggers.net

Two Western men are sent to work far away from home, tasked with paving a road the length of a country. The country is dangerous and largely lawless, only just recovering from a devastating civil war, and the road will unite north and south. The road is Progress. The road is Hope. And, when it is completed, a great parade will march it end to end. 
 
The two men follow a route from the outer villages to the capital, operating their high-tech road-building machine and bickering along the way. One man is highly experienced, reliable, focused, pausing only to sleep and eat the company-issued food. The other is chaotic, curious, forever joking with locals and breaking protocol. But when illness, corruption, and theft compromise their mission, the pair discover danger far greater than anything they had anticipated.

The Monk of Mokha

From the best-selling author of The Circle - the gripping true story of a young Yemeni American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana'a by civil war 
 
Mokhtar Alkhanshali is twenty-four and working as a doorman when he becomes fascinated with the rich history of coffee and Yemen's central place in it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral home to tour terraced farms high in the country's rugged mountains. He collects samples and organizes farmers and is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs the country. Saudi bombs rain down, the U.S. embassy closes, and Mokhtar has to find a way out of Yemen with only his hopes on his back. 
 
The Monk of Mokha is the story of this courageous and visionary young man following the most American of dreams. 
 
'Extraordinary... No story is more urgent' Observer 
 
'Dramatic, aspirational smartly and engagingly written... Exactly what I want to read right now' The Times 
 
'The antidote to Trumpism... This is a book that celebrates [the] exuberance of the human spirit' Mail on Sunday 
 
'This book... is about the American dream, and the threat that it is under' Spectator 
 
'Remarkable... full of derring-do, tenacity and exceptional luck' Metro

Readers will never take coffee for granted or overlook the struggles of Yemen after ingesting Eggers's phenomenally well-written, juggernaut tale of an intrepid and irresistible entrepreneur on a complex and meaningful mission, a highly caffeinated adventure story

A most improbable and uplifting success story... Eggers offers an appealing hybrid: a biography of a charming, industrious Muslim man who has more ambition than direction; a capsule history of coffee and its origins, growth, and development as a mass commodity and then as a niche product; the story of Blue Bottle, the elite coffee chain in San Francisco that some suspect (and some fear) could turn into the next Starbucks; an adventure story of civil war in a foreign country... It is hard to resist the derring-do of the Horatio Alger of Yemenite coffee

The remarkable true story of a Yemeni coffee farmer... A vibrant depiction of courage and passion, interwoven with a detailed history of Yemeni coffee and a timely exploration of Muslim American identity

Works as both a heart-warming success story with a winning central character and an account of real-life adventures that read with the vividness of fiction

It'll open your eyes - very wide - to the singular origins of your single origin

Eggers's narrative is guaranteed to be every bit as compelling as that of any novel

Dave Eggers returns to his "factional" mode with The Monk Of Mokha, in which a Yemeni immigrant to the US discovers an obsession with coffee, returns home, and is caught in a war. Given his previous form with What Is The What and Zeitoun I have high hopes of this book

This is a book that celebrates ethnic diversity and the exuberance of the human spirit

[Dave Eggers] is on a mission to use the platform he has created as a writer/activist to give direct voice to the marginalised or unheard... No story is more urgent

Bridgemakers such as Mokhtar courageously embody America's reason for being - as a place of radical opportunity and ceaseless welcome... a blended people united not by stasis and cowardice and fear, but by irrational exuberance, by global enterprise on a human scale

It's hard to imagine ALkhanshali's story being told with more pace, scope or sensitivity. An extraordinary adventure

Mokhtar's story is a remarkable one, full of derring-do, tenacity and exceptional luck

It is impossible not to root for Mokhtar. And as with all good bildungsromans, it is as much the reader as the hero who receives an education

Mokhtar grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings in a tiny apartment, raised by Yemeni immigrant parents. As a young man he learned of the true origins of coffee making - an ancient art born in Yemen, the secret stolen by European colonisers - and became determined to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee. 
 
Mokhtar dedicated himself to coffee, quickly becoming one of the world's leading experts, the first Arab in the world to qualify as a 'Q Grader'. But while visiting Yemen on a research trip, he was caught in the maelstrom of sudden civil war. The US Embassy closed its doors, and so Mokhtar embarked on a nail-biting adventure - to escape the country with his precious coffee samples intact. 
 
The Monk of Mokha is heart-pounding adventure story, a tale of underdog entrepreneurship and true passion, and a fascinating modern take on the great American dream.

Heroes of the Frontier

THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER 
 
'The mirror image of Eggers's brilliantly dystopian The Circle... [A] state of the nation novel, cleansing the spirit and lifting the heart' Guardian 
 
A hilarious and heart-warming misadventure through modern America: it's time for the family vacation... 
 
Josie's life is falling apart - lawsuits raining down, her business down the drain and a feckless husband long gone - so she gathers up her two kids and lights out for the wilderness. The Alaskan wilderness, to be specific. 
 
This is a story about the trip of a lifetime. It involves one battered old RV, one highly sensitive eight year old boy, one fearless and hyperactive five year old girl, several forest fires, a large supply of pinot noir, and a deeply misguided sense of optimism. It may well be that things don't turn out quite as Josie expected - but then again, some of the best places in the world are found at the end of a road you didn't mean to take... 
 
Heroes of the Frontier is an uproariously funny portrait of modern America and the modern family, an entirely contemporary novel gleaming with Dave Eggers' trademark intelligence and originality.

Publisher's description.  A brilliant new black comedy about modern America.  A surreal family road trip through the Alaskan wilderness veers wildly off-course, as one mother and her two young children try to make their way back to the 'right' path - and find a new one along the way.

Josie's life is falling apart - lawsuits raining down, her business down the drain and a feckless husband long gone - so she gathers up her two kids and lights out for the wilderness. The Alaskan wilderness, to be specific. 
 
This is a story about the trip of a lifetime. It involves one battered old RV, one highly sensitive eight year old boy, one fearless and hyperactive five year old girl, several forest fires, a large supply of pinot noir, and a deeply misguided sense of optimism. It may well be that things don't turn out quite as Josie expected - but then again, some of the best places in the world are found at the end of a road you didn't mean to take...

A Hologram for the King

New from Dave Eggers, National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King. 
 
In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and a moving story of how we got here. 
 
Praise for A Hologram for the King: 
 
'Absorbing . . . modest and equally satisfying: the writing of a comic but deeply affecting tale about one man's travails that also provides a bright, digital snapshot of our times' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 
 
'A fascinating novel' New Yorker 
 
'A spare but moving elegy for the American century' Publishers Weekly 
 
'Eggers understands the pressures of American downward-mobility, and in the protagonist of his novel, Alan Clay, has created an Everyman, a post-modern Willy Loman . . . The novel operates on a grand and global scale, but it also is intimate' Chicago Tribune 
 
'Completely engrossing' Fortune 
 
'Eggers can do fiction as well as he likes' Los Angeles Times 
 
Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, How We Are Hungry, You Shall Know Our Velocity, What is the What, The Wild Things and Zeitoun. Zeitoun was the winner of the American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and What is the What was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and won France's Prix Médicis. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. A native of Chicago, he lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.

A spare but moving elegy for the American century

Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. [Hologram] is a strike against the current state of global economic in justice

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. 
 
In this critically-acclaimed novel, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and a moving story of how we got here.

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

Your Fathers, Where Are They is Dave Eggers's brilliantly executed story of one man struggling to make sense of the world. 
 
 In a barracks on an abandoned military base, miles from the nearest road, Thomas watches as the man he has brought wakes up. Kev, a NASA astronaut, doesn't recognize his captor, though Thomas remembers him. Kev cries for help. He pulls at the chain. But the ocean is close by, and nobody can hear him over the waves and wind. Thomas apologizes. He didn't want to have to resort to this. But they really needed to have a conversation, and Kev didn't answer his messages. And now, if Kev can just stop yelling, Thomas has a few questions. 
 
 'With each tightly controlled book, Eggers's fiction becomes more prescient, moving and unsettling . . . Even if all generations are lost generations, we need engaged, incendiary novels which ask: What now?' Independent 
 
 'An angry and astute investigation into the state of America . . . Politically and polemically engaged in the tradition of Dickens and Zola' Mark Lawson, Guardian 
 
 'One of our fiercest and most compelling writers' Sunday Times

One of our fiercest and most compelling writers

Eggers can write about pretty much anything and make it glitter and somersault on the page . . . dazzling and highly original

Possibly the most admired and emulated American author of his generation

A jazz session - a brief, single helping of strangeness that flaunts his panache for stylistic experimentation. . . The writing is compelling and the characterization astute

Inherently interesting. I can think of few contemporary American writers who convey such a sense of urgency about the mess we're in. Eggers pulls no punches

One of the country's leading literary eminences

Eggers writes so well you would read a computer manual if it was by him, but beneath his beguiling style is a base note of genuine concern about those who find themselves out of kilter with society.

His latest novella, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? stretches his toying with literary forms to new lengths...compelling

But with each tightly controlled book, Eggers' fiction becomes more prescient, moving and unsettling... Even if all generations are lost generations, we need engaged, incendiary novels which ask: What now?

The faint echo of Plato's dialogues . . . Raising questions about the appropriate 
 relationship between authority and compassion.

An angry and astute investigation into the state of America ... Politically and polemically engaged in the tradition of Dickens and Zola.

Eggers has a knack for potent images of frustration . . [He] has produced something timely

A major talent. His voice - loud, sardonic, compassionate, and honest . . . Eggers has developed into a profoundly serious novelist and nonfiction writer with a social and political conscience.

Dave Eggers never writes the same book twice, and his latest may be his most unusual to date . . . [A] fleet and forceful story by one of our finest fiction writers . . .stark exchanges, with little exposition ... propels the reader to the end.

Unmistakably the work of a singular talent. . . Even if all generations are lost generations, we need engaged, incendiary novels which ask: What now?

Fathers is a screaming, bleating cry for society to fix itself. It is a frothing, angry, mournful meditation on what is slipping away as America plows on into the 21st century... compelling

Another startling leap into new territory . . . Here is a tale as tightly wound as an alarm clock. . . Eggers has always been as elastic writer, but in Your Fathers he puts his language to the ultimate test.

This short, provocative novel feels a bit like Jack Bauer stepping into Kierkegaard's collected works. . .  ambitiously confronts a grand history of philosophical angst . . .  Swift and smart.

Engaging . . .  You know what Eggers wants to say, he says it quickly, and he says it with a respectably righteous fury. And, ultimately, he says it with a compassion that's always been present in his work . . . Fascinating.

Within 212 pages, Eggers displays a delicate, haunting, sometimes dire picture of the world. It may not be a comfortable read, but it's an interesting take on what we believe to be true and what we hope to be true.

In a barracks on an abandoned military base, miles from the nearest road, Thomas watches as the man he has brought wakes up. Kev, a NASA astronaut, doesn't recognize his captor, though Thomas remembers him. Kev cries for help. He pulls at the chain. But the ocean is close by, and nobody can hear him over the waves and wind. Thomas apologizes. He didn't want to have to resort to this. But they really needed to have a conversation, and Kev didn't answer his messages. And now, if Kev can just stop yelling, Thomas has a few questions.

The Circle

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega 
 
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - a dark, thrilling and unputdownable novel about our obsession with the internet 
 
'Prepare to be addicted' Daily Mail 
 
'A gripping and highly unsettling read' Sunday Times 
 
'The Circle is 'Brave New World' for our brave new world... Fast, witty and troubling' Washington Post 
 
When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails, social media, and finances with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of transparency. Mae can't believe her great fortune to work for them - even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public ... 
 
Pre-order the electrifying follow up to The Circle now . . . The Every is coming November 2021. 
 
'An elegantly told, compulsively readable parable for the 21st Century' Vanity Fair 
 
'Immensely readable and very timely' Metro 
 
'Prescient, important and enjoyable . . . a deft modern synthesis of Swiftian wit with Orwellian prognostication' Guardian

Publisher's description. Fast, thrilling and compulsively addictive, The Circle is Dave Eggers' bestselling novel about our obsession with the internet and where it may lead. When Mae Holland lands her dream job at the world's most powerful internet company, she has no idea what awaits behind the doors of The Circle...

A stunning work of terrifying plausability ... a worthy and entertaining read

Eggers has set his style and pace to technothriller: the writing is brisk, spare and efficient ... it works

Prescient, important and enjoyable ... a deft modern synthesis of Swiftian wit with Orwellian prognostication'

The Circle is 'Brave New World' for our brave new world ... fast, witty and troubling

An elegantly told, compulsively readable parable for the 21st Century

Eggers's writing is so fluent, his ventriloquism of tech-world dialect so light, his denouement so enjoyably inevitable

Tremendous novel ... inventive, big hearted and very funny. Prepare to be addicted

Eggers brilliantly depicts the Internet binges, torrents of information and endless loops of feedback that increasingly characterize modern life

When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails, social media, and finances with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of transparency. Mae can't believe her great fortune to work for them -  even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public ...

Dave Eggers

The electrifying follow up to Sunday Times bestseller The Circle

When the world's largest search engine / social media company merges with the planet's dominant e-commerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous-and, oddly enough, most beloved-monopoly ever known: The Every. 
 
Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Kavakian, they look for the company's weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save? Does humanity truly want to be free? 
 
Studded with unforgettable characters and lacerating set-pieces, The Every blends satire and terror, while keeping the reader in breathless suspense about the fate of the company - and the human animal.

Dave Eggers

The Every

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