The Great Believers Audiobook By Rebecca Makkai cover art

The Great Believers

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The Great Believers

By: Rebecca Makkai
Narrated by: Michael Crouch
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About this listen

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

A New York Times TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018

LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER

ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER

THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER

Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler

“A page turner.... An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.” (The New York Times Book Review)

A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed author Rebecca Makkai.

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, and Chicago Public Library.

©2018 Rebecca Makkai (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt Tearjerking Emotionally Gripping Inspiring
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Critic reviews

“Makkai knits themes of loss, betrayal, friendship and survival into a powerful story of people struggling to keep their humanity in dire circumstances.” (People Magazine)

“Cultural revolutions of the past painfully reverberate in Rebecca Makkai’s deft third novel, The Great Believers, which captures both the devastation of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago and the emotional aftershocks of those losses.” (Vogue)

"Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is a page turner... among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the present - among the first to convey the terrors and tragedies of the epidemic’s early years as well as its course and repercussions...An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis." (The New York Times Book Review)

Featured Article: Moving Listens About the AIDS Epidemic


The AIDS crisis is a devastating part of history that should never be forgotten. The epidemic led to the death of more than 25 million Americans and contributed to the health struggles of countless others. The audiobooks on this list confront the harsh, heartbreaking realities of the AIDS epidemic. Each of these listens helps commemorate a dark part of our nation’s history and honor those who lost their lives to the bigotry that built barriers to treatment and care.

What listeners say about The Great Believers

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Definitely worth the listen!

This was a really good one, both from a storytelling perspective, bringing light to how the AIDS epidemic affected a close-knit group of friends and their family members, and of course the references to Chicago, particularly Boystown, that feel so familiar.

Chapter 34, in particular, really took my breath away, arriving teary-eyed to work that morning.

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outstanding

great character development terrific and poignant story author showed me ways that aids must have felt for the friends.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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heartbreaking but beautiful

as a gay man in my late 20s as I write this review, this book definitely makes me feel many emotions... gratitude, anger, guilt, to name a few.. but one thing I can say is this is very well-done.. while the story is fictional, the author does a good job of depicting accurate historical representations of how the AIDS crisis affected the LGBTQ community and it's allies. I also appreciated the accurate representations of Chicago as I am a current Chicago resident as well. this book is a beautiful read but be prepared for it to tug at your heart strings as you dive into some pretty heavy stuff. it took me 2 months to read because I had to keep taking mental breaks from it and read some happier novels haha

only criticism is narration on audiobook... very monotone and odd voice fluctuations, especially at the end of chapters is when I noticed it often.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Forever Young

Fiona of Boystown. Their Mother Theresa.
The return of Julian.
The Gladys Administration.
Yale’s melancholy.
...and most of all Roscoe.

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Read It Twice, Back to Back!

The characters were so vivid and the story so compelling that I read The Great Believers twice, back to back! How did we as a country let AIDS take so many people?!!! Read and reflect on whether we are taking care of our own today.

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One of the best

LOVED everything about it. The only thing I don't like as much is the simple fact that I've finished the book.

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Sticks With You

I think about these characters daily as if I knew them myself. Rebecca Makkai builds such strong characterization that you feel you knew the characters in real life. This book has stuck with me even months after reading it.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Performance distracts from interesting story

Pros: this novel brings to life how AIDS cruelly stripped loving relationships from the gay community in the 80’s. I gained a lot of empathy for the survivors. The protagonists had interesting life stories. The prose is detailed and descriptive.

Cons: The plot was slow to develop, seemed stalled at times. The performance was monotonous, and the narrator has no business playing female voices. All of the female characters sounded like sassy, quick-talking, gum-chewing teenagers.

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Lovingly written and wonderfully performed

I found myself emotionally entwined with each main character. Their stories and experiences were indicative of so many things my friends and I lived through in the 80s and 90s.

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Bang-on. It's like Makkai was there in the 80's.

Reading this book made me wonder why it's taken 30 years for someone to tackle the AIDS crisis of the mid-80's in literary fiction. Makkai brings it all back in vivid detail - the beautiful boys, feral and tribal together in Boystown, Chicago (or any other gay neighborhood) after their families reject them. How different the environment was then (it was acceptable for straight people not to want gay people to use the bathroom in their homes and gays never held hands in public or came out at work). The undercurrent of fear and suspense and mourning as one by one, friends told you they were sick, then wasted away and died. The culture is so different now with assimilation and the current focus on gender identity that we forget how revolutionary Act Up was in paving the way for the rights - and banal assimilation - we take for granted now.

Makkai's work tells that story with a plot that creates some quiet suspense and real surprises. She weaves in some of the most important historical events of the last 115 years with a deft hand. Sub plots track the gay culture of the 80's as another lost generation along with the artists and expats we lost in WWI. We see the gift and the burden of caregiving and how that shaped the women that the boys left behind during the war and during AIDS, and how both love and art can keep people alive - or at least their delicate ghosts.

A powerful and emotional book, a story beautifully told.

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