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In 1991 and 1992, within months of each other, both of Dave Eggers’s parents died of cancer. He was 21, and he moved to California to raise his eight-year-old brother Toph. The memoir he wrote about it, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Since then he has written novels about a Sudanese refugee, a salesman in the Saudi desert and a tech company that wants to see everything, reported a book on Hurricane Katrina, won the Newbery Medal for a children’s book about a dog, and founded the publisher McSweeney’s and the 826 Valencia writing centres. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 2000–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Dave Eggers has published more than thirty books. The best known are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), What Is the What (2006), Zeitoun (2009), A Hologram for the King (2012) and The Circle (2013). Start with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; below is the order of all 12 key books and which to read next depending on what you are after.
Where to Start with Dave Eggers
If you want his defining book
→ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) — the 2000 memoir about raising his brother.
If you want reported nonfiction
→ Zeitoun (2009) — one family in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
If you want a novel about technology
→ The Circle (2013) — the 2013 novel about a company that films everything.
If you want something to read with children
→ The Eyes and the Impossible (2023) — the Newbery Medal winner.
12 Dave Eggers Books, in Order
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Eggers’s memoir of the deaths of his parents in 1991 and 1992 and the years he spent raising his younger brother Toph in the San Francisco Bay Area while starting the magazine Might. It opens with a long, self-mocking preface and keeps questioning its own honesty as it goes. It was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
You Shall Know Our Velocity
His first novel. Will, grieving a friend who has died, sets off with his friend Hand on a one-week trip around the world to give away a sum of money he feels he did not earn. A revised and expanded edition appeared in 2003 as Sacrament.
What Is the What
A novel built from the life of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, who fled his Dinka village during the Second Sudanese Civil War and spent more than a decade in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kakuma, Kenya. The story is framed by a night in 2005 when Deng is robbed and beaten in his Atlanta apartment. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Prix Médicis étranger in 2009.
Zeitoun
Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American painting contractor, stays in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and paddles a second-hand canoe around the flooded city, helping neighbours and feeding abandoned dogs. On 6 September 2005 he is arrested with three others and held for weeks without explanation. The book also won the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest.
A Hologram for the King
Alan Clay, an American salesman whose career is running out, travels to Saudi Arabia to win an IT contract for King Abdullah Economic City, a city being built in the desert, and waits day after day for the king to arrive. It was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, and Tom Tykwer filmed it with Tom Hanks in 2016.
The Circle
Mae Holland, a recent graduate, joins The Circle, a powerful tech company whose mottos include “secrets are lies” and “privacy is theft”. She agrees to “go transparent”, streaming her whole day through a camera, and becomes complicit in the company’s surveillance. The 2017 film starred Emma Watson and Tom Hanks.
Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?
A novel told entirely in dialogue. A man named Thomas takes a former astronaut and then others he holds responsible for his disappointments to an abandoned military base on the California coast and questions them one by one. It was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2016.
Heroes of the Frontier
Josie, a dentist whose life in Ohio has fallen apart, takes her two young children, Paul and Ana, to Alaska and drives them around the state in an old camper van while wildfires burn.
The Monk of Mokha
Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a young Yemeni-American working as a doorman in San Francisco, becomes fascinated by the history of coffee in Yemen and travels there to work with its farmers. When civil war breaks out in 2015 he is trapped, held at gunpoint, and finally escapes across the Red Sea in a small boat with his coffee samples.
The Every
The sequel to The Circle. The company has bought an e-commerce giant and renamed itself The Every, with Mae Holland as chief executive; a new employee, Delaney Wells, joins it. Eggers kept the hardcover off Amazon and sold it through independent bookshops.
The Eyes and the Impossible
Johannes, a fast and free dog, is the eyes of a city park, watching over everything that happens there. When sudden changes come to the park, he and his animal friends must work to protect its “Equilibrium”. Illustrated by Shawn Harris, it won the 2024 Newbery Medal.
Contrapposto
A novel, twenty years in the making, about a friendship between two artists over more than sixty years: Robert “Cricket” Dibbs, a quiet boy who finds himself in drawing, and Olympia, who keeps arriving in his life, pushing him and leaving again. It follows Cricket through art college, a gallery internship and work for an artist whose pieces are made by others, and draws on Eggers’s own training as a painter.
In What Order to Read Dave Eggers
Only two of his adult books are connected: The Every (2021) is a sequel to The Circle (2013), so read those two in that order. Everything else stands alone, and you can move between memoir, reported nonfiction and novels as you like.
Publication order shows a clear shift. The early books are about Eggers himself and his own voice; from What Is the What onward he mostly writes about other people, often real ones, and the style becomes plainer. Contrapposto (2026) returns to material from his own life, his years in art school.
A reading path
1. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)
2. What Is the What (2006)
3. Zeitoun (2009)
4. The Circle (2013)
5. Contrapposto (2026)
Everything Else Dave Eggers Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Stories and short novels
4
4 books · 2004–2019
- 2004How We Are Hungryshort stories
- 2009The Wild Thingsa novel developed alongside the film Where the Wild Things Are
- 2019The Paradea short novel about two men paving a road in a country after a civil war
- 2019The Captain and the Glorya short satire of the Trump era
Other nonfiction
2
2 books · 2005
- 2005Teachers Have It Easywith Daniel Moulthrop and Nínive Clements Calegari
- 2005Surviving Justiceoral histories of the wrongly convicted, edited with Lola Vollen
Children’s books
3
3 books · 2018–2026
- 2018The Liftersa middle-grade novel
- 2021The Museum of Rainthe first of The Forgetters short books
- 2026The Eyes, the Fire & the Avalanche Kingdoma second novel about Johannes
The years · 1970–2026
Quick facts about Dave Eggers
- Known for
- Dave Eggers is known for turning his own grief into a playful, self-conscious memoir, and then for using fiction and reporting to tell the stories of real people caught up in war, disaster and the technology industry.
- 1970
- Born in Boston, Massachusetts
- 1998
- Founds McSweeney’s
- 2013
- The Circle
- 2026
- Contrapposto
- Born
- 12 March 1970, Boston, Massachusetts; grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois
- Education
- Studied journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
- Founded
- McSweeney’s (1998) and, with Nínive Clements Calegari, the 826 Valencia writing centre (2002)
- Married
- The novelist Vendela Vida, in 2003
- Screenwriting
- Where the Wild Things Are (2009, with Spike Jonze) and Away We Go (2009, with Vendela Vida)
- Honours
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (2015); Newbery Medal (2024)
The red mark is 2000: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the memoir that made his name.
How Dave Eggers Writes
His first book is famous for its frame as much as its story: a preface with rules for reading it, a list of its own themes, footnotes in which he argues with himself about what he is leaving out. That playfulness also shaped McSweeney’s, the publishing house he started in 1998, whose quarterly changes its design with almost every issue.
From What Is the What on, he largely moved the spotlight off himself. What Is the What and Zeitoun rest on long interviews with the people they are about, and The Monk of Mokha follows the same method. What Is the What is told in Deng’s first person, though it is published as a novel.
His novels about the present tend to be built on one clear premise: a salesman waiting for a king, a company whose motto is “secrets are lies”, a man questioning his captives in an abandoned base. The prose is plain and quick, and Your Fathers, Where Are They? drops narration altogether in favour of dialogue.
Watch
Dave Eggers: Once Upon a School
Accepting the 2008 TED Prize, Eggers tells the story of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco tutoring centre behind a pirate-supply shop, and asks the audience to get involved with their local public schools.
Frequently asked questions about Dave Eggers’s books
How many books has Dave Eggers written?
More than thirty, counting his children’s books and short works. Twelve are the key books on this page, from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) to Contrapposto (2026); the rest include story collections, edited oral histories and books for children.
What are Dave Eggers’s books in order?
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), What Is the What (2006), Zeitoun (2009), A Hologram for the King (2012), The Circle (2013), Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (2014), Heroes of the Frontier (2016), The Monk of Mokha (2018), The Every (2021), The Eyes and the Impossible (2023) and Contrapposto (2026).
Where should I start with Dave Eggers?
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the memoir about raising his younger brother after their parents died. If you prefer a novel, start with The Circle; for reported nonfiction, Zeitoun.
What is Dave Eggers’s most famous book?
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Among his novels, The Circle (2013) is the best known, partly because of the 2017 film.
Do I need to read The Circle before The Every?
It helps. The Every (2021) is a sequel set after The Circle has bought an e-commerce giant, with Mae Holland, the heroine of The Circle, now its chief executive. The story follows a new character, Delaney Wells.
Which Dave Eggers books have been made into films?
A Hologram for the King (2016), directed by Tom Tykwer with Tom Hanks, and The Circle (2017), directed by James Ponsoldt with Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, a screenplay Eggers co-wrote. He also co-wrote the screenplays for Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go (both 2009).
Did Dave Eggers win the Newbery Medal?
Yes. The Eyes and the Impossible, illustrated by Shawn Harris, won the 2024 Newbery Medal, the main American award for children’s literature.
Is What Is the What a true story?
It is based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee, and written from long interviews with him, but it is published as a novel rather than as a memoir, and is subtitled The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng.
Have there been controversies around Dave Eggers’s books?
Two are often raised. In 2013 Kate Losse, a former Facebook employee, said The Circle drew on her memoir The Boy Kings; Eggers said through his publisher that he had not read it. And Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the subject of Zeitoun, was later charged with soliciting the murder of his ex-wife and others (found not guilty in 2013) and convicted of felony stalking her in 2016.
Is Dave Eggers still alive?
Yes. He was born on 12 March 1970 in Boston. His most recent novel, Contrapposto, was published in 2026.
Footnotes
- Dave Eggers — Wikipedia
- What Is the What — Wikipedia
- Zeitoun (book) — Wikipedia
- The Circle (Eggers novel) — Wikipedia
- Dave Eggers and Vashti Harrison win Newbery and Caldecott Medals — American Library Association, 2024
- Contrapposto — BookBrowse review, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back.”
— Dave Eggers, interview with The Harvard Advocate (2000)
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