> Skip to content
  • Published: 6 February 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241968963
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 528

Special Topics in Calamity Physics




An unforgettable debut novel that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock: a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit.

'It had been almost a year since I’d found Hannah dead, and I thought I’d managed to erase all traces of that night within myself. I was wrong.'

Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a mesmerizing debut. As teenager Blue van Meer tells her story we are hurled into a dizzying world of murder and butterflies, womanizing and wandering, American McCulture, the Western Canon, political radicalism and juvenile crushisms. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class (with hand-drawn Visual Aids), Blue’s wickedly funny yet poignant tale reveals how the imagination finds meaning in the most bewildering times, the ways people of all ages strive for connection, and how the darkest of secrets can set us free.

  • Published: 6 February 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241968963
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 528

About the author

Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl’s bestselling first novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, won the 2006 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize (now the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize), and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. She grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and currently resides in New York City.

Also by Marisha Pessl

See all

Praise for Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink

Jonathan Franzen, author of, The Corrections