Contrapposto.jpg
Contrapposto.jpg

Contrapposto by Dave Eggers

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Hardcover:

NATIONAL BESTSELLER · THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A sweeping novel about friendship, love, and the lifelong pursuit of art from Dave Eggers, the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and The Eyes & the Impossible

“Glorious and captivating, with Eggers’ signature humor and precision, Contrapposto tells a big and big-hearted story that counter-positions exquisitely the pain and exhilarations of love and the creative impulse. I loved this novel.” —Lily King, author of Heart the Lover

“In this satisfyingly old-school novel, an artist tries to find his place, and hold onto his spark, in a world that values fads and flash. . . . Contrapposto is an earthy, warm return to form . . . . To call the book ‘moving’ would be a smelly cliché, so let’s say undulating, with both despair and hope.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

Cricket Dibb discovers his gift for art in grade school, where he meets Olympia Argyros — older, brilliant, and utterly certain of herself. What starts as a creative partnership becomes a lifelong companionship, unfolding across sixty-five years of friendship, collaboration, and eventually romance.

Their orbits carry them from New York galleries to Paris ateliers to Thailand and back, as they each pursue their own idea of what art is for, even as the market keeps trying to tell them. Contrapposto traces how two deeply connected people keep choosing each other through decades of change, illness, and loss.

Dave Eggers — a classically trained artist himself — writes a novel that is, at its core, "decidedly optimistic about the power of art to endlessly delight, and the beauty of a lifelong friendship."

NATIONAL BESTSELLER · THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A sweeping novel about friendship, love, and the lifelong pursuit of art from Dave Eggers, the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and The Eyes & the Impossible

“Glorious and captivating, with Eggers’ signature humor and precision, Contrapposto tells a big and big-hearted story that counter-positions exquisitely the pain and exhilarations of love and the creative impulse. I loved this novel.” —Lily King, author of Heart the Lover

“In this satisfyingly old-school novel, an artist tries to find his place, and hold onto his spark, in a world that values fads and flash. . . . Contrapposto is an earthy, warm return to form . . . . To call the book ‘moving’ would be a smelly cliché, so let’s say undulating, with both despair and hope.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

Cricket Dibb discovers his gift for art in grade school, where he meets Olympia Argyros — older, brilliant, and utterly certain of herself. What starts as a creative partnership becomes a lifelong companionship, unfolding across sixty-five years of friendship, collaboration, and eventually romance.

Their orbits carry them from New York galleries to Paris ateliers to Thailand and back, as they each pursue their own idea of what art is for, even as the market keeps trying to tell them. Contrapposto traces how two deeply connected people keep choosing each other through decades of change, illness, and loss.

Dave Eggers — a classically trained artist himself — writes a novel that is, at its core, "decidedly optimistic about the power of art to endlessly delight, and the beauty of a lifelong friendship."

  • Publisher: Knopf

    Title: Contrapposto

    Author: Dave Eggers

    On Sale Date: June 9, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9780593803509

    ISBN 10: 0593803507

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $32.00

    BISAC: Literary Fiction

    Page Count: 432

    Dimensions: 6-1/8 x 9-1/8"

  • Dave Eggers is the author of numerous award-winning novels, including The Circle and A Hologram for the King. A classically trained artist and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and founded 826 National, a network of youth writing centers. His 2024 children's book The Eyes and the Impossible won the Newbery Medal.

  • Pre-release readers are calling it tender, absurd, and technically accomplished.

    • Harvard Review: "Heartbreaking and heart-wrenching and heartwarming."

    • Harvard Review: "Often absurd, always moving, never boring."

    • The New York Times Book Review: "An earthy, warm return to form...undulating, with both despair and hope."

    • Chicago Tribune: "A rare thing, a smart book about the joy of being creative."

This book is for you if

  • You want a decades-spanning love story that’s really about two people’s shared devotion to their work

  • You’re drawn to novels about the art world that don’t sneer at ambition or sincerity

  • You like a sprawling structure that follows characters across cities and decades

  • You appreciate humor and absurdity sitting right next to real heartbreak

  • You’ve read Eggers before and want to see him return to that same warmth and formal invention

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