Fight Club
A man who struggles with insomnia meets a colorful extremist, and they create a secret organization together. Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.
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What you might want to know about Fight Club
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An insomniac IKEA-furnished narrator meets a soap maker named Tyler Durden on a plane. Together they start a club where men fight in basements, then start something a lot harder to walk back.
Yes. David Fincher directed a 1999 film adaptation starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. The film is widely considered one of the most faithful and influential adaptations of any contemporary novel, despite changing the ending slightly.
Yes. Chuck Palahniuk wrote graphic-novel sequels Fight Club 2 and Fight Club 3, both set after the original. The graphic novels expand the story but received more mixed reception than the original.
Fight Club was written by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1996 by Penguin Random House.
Fight Club is 222 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Fight Club takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
Fight Club is a standalone novel by Chuck Palahniuk, not part of a series.
Fight Club is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.