Books with author Gabe Habash

This dark, gripping tale of an obsessed college wrestler is “one of the best novels of the year” (NPR). Stephen is in his final wrestling season at his North Dakota school, and he intends to win the divisional championship in his weight class. He thinks about little else, in fact. It will make up for the failures of the past. It will prove something to the world. It will be the fulfillment of a promise to himself, and a tribute to his late grandmother, who raised him after his parents’ fatal car crash. As the competition in Kenosha, Wisconsin, grows ever closer, Stephen will grow ever more consumed—and unsure of what comes next—in this “utterly engrossing” literary debut (Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will). “[A] burningly, bitterly funny tale of college student Stephen, who throws himself into wrestling to face down his fears.” —Library Journal “Stephen Florida’s grim portrait of ambition led astray captures how competitiveness and masculinity can unravel those who blindly follow its codes.” —The Atlantic “Habash writes about the raw physicality of wrestling better than anybody this side of John Irving . . . A lively, occasionally harrowing journey into obsession.” —Kirkus Reviews

"In Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he's created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study."―Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little LifeFoxcatcher meets The Art of Fielding, Stephen Florida follows a college wrestler in his senior season, when every practice, every match, is a step closer to greatness and a step further from sanity. Profane, manic, and tipping into the uncanny, it's a story of loneliness, obsession, and the drive to leave a mark.Gabe Habash is the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. He holds an MFA from New York University and lives in New York.