City on Fire
The all-too-human individuals who live within this extraordinary first novel are: Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's biggest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Sam, two Long Island teenagers seduced by downtown's nascent punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter; his spunky, West Coast-transplant neighbor; and the detective trying to figure out what they all have to do with a shooting in Central Park. From post-Vietnam youth culture to the fiscal crisis, from a lushly appointed townhouse on Sutton Place to a derelict squat on East 3rd Street, this city on fire is at once recognizable and completely unexpected. And when the infamous blackout of July 13th, 1977, plunges it into darkness, each of these entangled lives will be changed, irrevocably.
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What you might want to know about City on Fire
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On New Year's Eve 1976, a teenage girl is shot in Central Park. Garth Risk Hallberg's nine-hundred-page debut threads punk zines, Wall Street heirs, journalists, and detectives across a New York City sliding toward blackout.
Yes. City on Fire is over 900 pages, depicting late-1970s New York City through interlocking storylines. The novel was widely covered as one of the most expensive book-deal debuts in publishing history.
No. Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire is a 2015 New York literary novel. Don Winslow's City on Fire (2022) is the first book in a Boston crime trilogy. The two are unrelated.
City on Fire was written by Garth Risk Hallberg, published in 2015 by Knopf.
City on Fire is 944 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, City on Fire takes most readers 14 to 20 hours to finish.
City on Fire is a standalone novel by Garth Risk Hallberg, not part of a series.
City on Fire is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
