A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

work by Eggers

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July 16, 2026

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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a 2000 memoir by Dave Eggers. The book details Eggers's experience raising his younger brother, Toph, after the deaths of their parents. It is noted for its use of postmodern writing techniques and fictionalized elements. The memoir earned Eggers significant acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize nomination, marking his breakout into literary stardom.12

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American literature
Multicultural writing
(1999); and Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), a painful but comic tour de force, half tongue-in-cheek, about a young man raising his brother after the death of their parents.
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(1999); and Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), a painful but comic tour de force, half tongue-in-cheek, about a young man raising his brother after the death of their parents.
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Dave Eggers
…literacy advocate whose breakout memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), was followed by other fiction and nonfiction successes. He also founded the publishing house McSweeney’s in 1998.
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…literacy advocate whose breakout memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), was followed by other fiction and nonfiction successes. He also founded the publishing house McSweeney’s in 1998.
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irony
while Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) explores irony’s boundaries.
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while Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) explores irony’s boundaries.
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