Great Disasters - Paperback

by Grady Chambers (Author)

A Best Book of 2025 from Chicago Review of Books

For fans of Ben Lerner's The Topeka School and Richard Linklater's Boyhood, Great Disasters is a stirring debut novel about six young men coming of age, and the enduring friendships that make us who we are--even as our paths diverge.

This is the story of how we became. I write those words but remain uncertain what they mean. . . . Drinking was a part of it. But as much as it was drinking, it was Ryan's love for Jana.
And as much as it was Ryan's love for Jana, it was equally the war.

In the early 2000s in Chicago, six young men start high school. Though they've been friends since boyhood, their high school years set them on new paths: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begin, along with the protests against them; Ryan falls in love but struggles to hold onto it; and he and the others learn to lose themselves in alcohol. With each passing year--as they enter college or the military, then the world beyond; form new relationships with partners and children; and navigate shifting loyalties to a changing country--the narrator feels the group breaking further apart and finds himself asking: What does it mean to move forward, both with and without one another?

Exploring the beauty, hope, and humor that can be found even in moments of deep loneliness and devastation, Grady Chambers' Great Disasters moves between memories of high school and early adulthood to consider friendship, first love, patriotism, protest, addiction, and more. An exquisitely written, profoundly moving debut novel, Great Disasters is an intimate portrait of disasters big and small, personal and political--and the ways the two are intertwined--and the announcement of a stunning new voice in American fiction.

Author Biography

Grady Chambers is the author of the poetry collection North American Stadiums (Milkweed Editions, 2018), winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Grady was born and raised on the north side of Chicago, and lives in Philadelphia. His writing can be found in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Sun, and many other publications. Grady is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow, and received his MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. More info at gradychambers.com.