The Believers (novel)
The cover of the first edition
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| Author | Zoë Heller |
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| Cover artist | gray318 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Fig Tree, an imprint of Penguin Books |
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Publication date
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September 2008 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 306 pp. |
| ISBN | (hardback), ISBN (trade paperback) |
| OCLC | 230916788 |
The Believers is a novel by Zoë Heller first published in 2008. It depicts a left-wing New York family of grown-ups who have little in common. The patriarch suffers an unexpected stroke and falls into a coma, after which each family member tries to continue his own unconventional course in life while at the same time trying to accommodate various revelations about the dying man and assisting and supporting the other family members in their lives.
The of the book—"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned"—is a quotation from Antonio Gramsci. It has been noted that The Believers, Heller's third novel, bears no resemblance to her previous book, the successful Notes on a Scandal (2003).
In 1962, at a party in London, 18-year-old Audrey Howard meets Joel Litvinoff, a prominent leftist lawyer involved with the civil rights movement who is on a short visit from the United States. Although Litvinoff is a complete stranger and fourteen years her senior, the two feel a mutual attraction, and when Litvinoff, after they have had sex, half-seriously suggests that Audrey follow him to the United States and become his wife, she takes him up on his offer without hesitation as she feels her chance has come to break away from her unexciting life as a typist in suburban London.
Both Joel and Audrey are Jewish but were raised in non-observant families. When they start their own family in Greenwich Village, they pride themselves on being atheists and thus having to fear nothing from death or life thereafter. Audrey bears two girls, Karla and Rosa, and the couple also adopt Lenny, whose mother, a left-wing radical, is serving a long-term prison sentence. Underneath the liberal veneer, however, the Litvinoffs display many of the characteristics of a traditional family: Audrey dedicates her existence to supporting her husband's legal career, turns a blind eye to his many extra-marital affairs, and does not oppose the patriarchal attitudes and behaviour that he exhibits at home. For four decades, their family life develops according to their chosen socialist agenda, which has its foundation in the ambition to fight injustice, help the weak, and, generally, make the world a better place to live.
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