Pinterest tracking pixel
If you are having difficulty navigating this website please contact us at member.services@bookofthemonth.com.
Oops! The page didn’t load right. Please refresh and try again.
All booksHistorical fictionThe Great Believers
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Historical fiction

The Great Believers

by Rebecca Makkai

Quick take

An intimate story about the 1980s AIDS epidemic, covering the lives (and loves) that were won and lost.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_SocialIssues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_LGBTQ

    LGBTQ+ themes

  • Illustrated icon, Icon_Sad

    Sad

Synopsis

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.

Read less

Preview

Get an early look from the first pages of The Great Believers.

Read a sample →

Historical fiction
  • Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
  • The Women
  • All We Were Promised
  • Spitting Gold
  • The Mayor of Maxwell Street
  • The Great Divide
  • The Storm We Made
  • The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
  • Lessons in Chemistry
  • The Frozen River
  • What We Kept to Ourselves
  • The River We Remember
  • Take My Hand
  • The Last Russian Doll
  • The First Ladies
  • The House Is On Fire
  • River Sing Me Home
  • The People We Keep
  • The Attic Child
  • Malibu Rising
  • The Book of Longings
  • Hester
  • The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
  • The Nightingale
  • Daisy Jones & The Six
  • The Lincoln Highway
  • The Secret Book of Flora Lea
  • Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
  • The Circus Train
  • Peach Blossom Spring
  • Hang the Moon
  • Booth
  • The Good Left Undone
  • Sisters in Arms
  • The Perishing
  • The Postmistress of Paris
  • The Family
  • Things We Lost to the Water
  • The Spectacular
  • Still Life
  • Send for Me
  • The Magnolia Palace
  • The Bookbinder
  • China Room
  • Summer of '69
  • This Tender Land
  • Atomic Love
  • All the Light We Cannot See
  • The Vanishing Half
  • Outlawed
  • The Four Winds
  • Independence
  • The Fountains of Silence
  • Libertie
  • Queen of Thieves
  • The Great Believers
  • The Clockmaker's Daughter
  • A Gentleman in Moscow
  • The Great Alone
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
  • The Paris Hours
  • The Heart's Invisible Furies
  • Rules of Civility
  • Circling the Sun
  • The Moor's Account
  • Jacqueline in Paris
  • Don't Cry for Me
  • The Christie Affair
  • Bloomsbury Girls
  • The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
  • Bronze Drum