The Believers

Blurb

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 motto 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.