Spanning three decades and two continents, The Great Believers is the story of a group of friends and their stirring emotional journey through the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and its effects on the contemporary lives of survivors. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him.
Why did Rebecca Makkai write The Great Believers?
At first I was just trying to find people who lived in Boystown in the 80s or people who had been deeply affected by AIDS in the 80s, and so I started off meeting with people who might have met one or two of those factors, circling closer and closer to people who actually had HIV in the 80s in Chicago, were out, et 19 Jun 2018
How does The Great Believers end?
The novel ends with scenes recounting Yale's death in the hospital in 1992, while Fiona, elsewhere in the hospital, gives birth to Claire. Fiona in 2015 discovers that Julian Ames is still alive.
What does the title The Great believers refer to?
The title is taken from an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote that serves as one of the novel's epigraphs: “We were the great believers. I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved—and who now walk the long stormy summer.”
Author Rebecca Makkai
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Language English
Genre Historical fiction
Publisher Penguin Books
Publication date June 4, 2019
What is The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai about?
Rebecca Makkai's “The Great Believers” is a page turner about illness and mortality. The novel tells, in alternating chapters, about a group of friends, most of them gay men, in Chicago in the mid-to-late 1980s, and about a woman in 2015 who has gone to Paris in search of her estranged daughter.25 Jun 2018
What is the theme of The Great Believers?
Rebecca Makkai's 2018 novel, The Great Believers, explores themes of trauma, lost generations, parenting, death, emotional inheritance, and the repetition of generational struggles as its weaves two stories throughout.14 Oct 2019