A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel

For Owen Burr, a towering athlete at Stanford University, a son of the renowned classicist Professor Joseph Burr, the Olympic Games in Athens were an inevitable destination. He belonged there. But destiny was derailed in his final match at Stanford, when a piercing elbow precipitated the loss of Owen's eye. Bereft of physical assurance, Owen experiences an inner rift, a loss of identity, and flees the country to fill the void. He settles upon Berlin, a city he once visited with his father. There, he encounters a community unlike any he knew in California, a group of artists living in a defunct watertower in the center of the city park. At the sight of Owen - nearly seven-feet-tall, wearing an eye patch and a corduroy suit - the group's famous ringleader greedily invites him to stay. Owen's appearance attracts more than just curiosity but a plot to exploit the vulnerable American golden boy for the purposes of art. Betrayal ignites rage. And rage brings Owen back to himself, recaptures a strength that had been discarded and abused, and sets him on a path of revenge. But only through the intervention of his newly radicalized father, who joins Owen on the lamb after inciting a riot while lecturing with Jean Baudrillard, and Stevie, Owen's only ally from Berlin, will Owen extract himself from the events he set in motion. In this powerful debut novel, Chancellor has crafted a compulsively readable balance of ideas, action, and intrigue, offering the reader a persuasive vision of personal agency, family, and the narratives we build for ourselves.