An unnamed insomniac narrator forms an underground bare-knuckle fighting club with charismatic soap salesman Tyler Durden, and watches it escalate from transgressive therapy into something far more dangerous. A diagnosis of consumer capitalism and male alienation that became one of the defining cult novels of the 1990s.
Philip Perlmann, a celebrated linguist, arrives at a conference in a Ligurian village to deliver a paper — but has nothing to say. As the deadline approaches, his paralysis deepens into a desperate plan that puts everything at risk.