First paperback edition. 8vo. Pp. xxxix, 375. Glossy pictorial wraps. Cover painting by Komar & Melamid, with blurbs by Michiko Kakutani, David Remnick, David Sedaris, David Foster Wallace, Lawrence Weschler, and Rick Moody. UK paperback first printing, not the subsequent edition with the additions at the back. An excerpt, in a somewhat different form, originally appeared in The New Yorker.
Shortlisted for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. TIME magazine's "Best Book of the Year." A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Subsequently chosen by The Times of London as the 12th best book of the decade. Author's first book. Memoir as metafiction draws on the author's formative years when as a college senior he assumed responsibility for his seven-year-old brother, 'Toph', following the cancer-related deaths of their parents. Eggers would go on to found the cult literary quarterly, McSweeney's.
"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