*This program includes Jesse Eisenberg's narration of the story God, previously recorded for the Paris Review Podcast* Voiced by an off-kilter chorus of the young and desperate to belong, Benjamin Nugent’s provocative collection pries the fraternity door off its hinges, daring us to peer inside with amusement, horror, and also love. In a Massachusetts college town stands a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Here, we meet Newton, the beloved chapter president; Oprah, the sensitive reader; Petey, the treasurer, loyal to a fault; Claire, the couch-surfing dropout who hopes to sell them drugs; and a girl known, for unexpected reasons, as God. Though the living room reeks of sweat and spilled beer, the brothers know that to be inside is everything. Fraternity celebrates the debauched kinship of boys and girls straddling adolescence and adulthood: the drunken antics, solemn confessions, and romantic encounters that mark their first years away from home. Beneath each episode lies the dread of exclusion. The closeted Oprah’s hero worship gives way to real longing. A combat veteran offers advice on hazing. An alienated young woman searches for a sanctuary. And the shadow of assault hovers over every sexual encounter. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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“Disarmingly lovely…Fraternities may be collegiate America’s biggest shame, but Fraternity is a revelation.”
— New York Times Book Review
“Nugent manages―the mark of the master satirist―to be simultaneously compassionate and ruthless. Splendid.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Benjamin Nugent’s essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Op-Ed page, New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Time, and n+1, and his fiction has appeared in Tin House. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Director of creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University, he teaches fiction and nonfiction in its MFA and undergraduate programs. He grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and lives in Boston.
Peter Ganim, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an American actor who has appeared on stage, on television, and in film. He has performed voice-over work since 1994.