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Mark Sarvas

Goodreads Author

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http://www.marksarvas.com/

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Genre

Fiction

Member Since

May 2010

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Mark Sarvas is the award-winning author of the novels @UGMAN (ITNA Press), MEMENTO PARK (FSG, Picador) and HARRY, REVISED (Bloomsbury). MEMENTO PARK is the winner of a 2019 American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation), and the 2019 American Jewish Library Association Fiction Award. It was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and was shortlisted for the JQ Wingate Literary Prize and longlisted for the Sophie Brody Medal. His debut novel, HARRY, REVISED, was published in more than a dozen countries around the world, earning raves from Le Monde to The Australian. A finalist for the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association's 2008 Fiction Award and a Denver Post 2008 Good Read, HARRY, REVISED has been call Mark Sarvas is the award-winning author of the novels @UGMAN (ITNA Press), MEMENTO PARK (FSG, Picador) and HARRY, REVISED (Bloomsbury). MEMENTO PARK is the winner of a 2019 American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation), and the 2019 American Jewish Library Association Fiction Award. It was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and was shortlisted for the JQ Wingate Literary Prize and longlisted for the Sophie Brody Medal. His debut novel, HARRY, REVISED, was published in more than a dozen countries around the world, earning raves from Le Monde to The Australian. A finalist for the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association's 2008 Fiction Award and a Denver Post 2008 Good Read, HARRY, REVISED has been called "A remarkable debut" by Booker Prize winner John Banville, and was compared to John Updike and Philip Roth by the Chicago Tribune. He was awarded a 2018 Santa Monica Arts Fellowship and is a 2021 Guild Hall Artist in Residence.

His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bookforum, The Huffington Post, The Dallas Morning News, The Barnes and Noble Review, Truthdig, The Modern Word, Boldtype and the Los Angeles Review of Books (where he is a contributing editor). He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/America, PEN Center USA and has judged the PEN Center USA Fiction Award, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the Kirkwood Prize and The Tournament of Books.

He began his literary career as the host of the popular and controversial literary weblog “The Elegant Variation”, a Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog, a Forbes Magazine Best of the Web pick, and a Los Angeles Magazine Top L.A. Blog. It has been covered by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Scotsman, Salon, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, The Village Voice, New York Newsday, The New York Sun, NPR's Day to Day and All Things Considered, and others. His short fiction has appeared in The Drawbridge, Troika Magazine, The Wisconsin Review, Apostrophe, Thought Magazine, Pindeldyboz and as part of the Spoken Interludes, Vermin on the Mount and Swink reading series in Los Angeles. He maintains an irregular newsletter, Eternal Recurrence.

He teaches advanced novel writing in the UCLA Extension Writers Program and holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College. He lives on the Monterey Peninsula. ...more

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Mark Sarvas’s books

Average rating: 3.54 · 1,141 ratings · 228 reviews · 7 distinct works • Similar authors

	Memento Park 3.65 avg rating — 762 ratings — published 2018 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry, Revised 3.32 avg rating — 369 ratings — published 2006 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	@UGMan 4.22 avg rating — 9 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Elegant Variation did not like it 1.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	enas allos anthropos / ένας άλλος άνθρωπος 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Harry revu et corrig? by Mark Sarvas (February 15,2010) by Mark Sarvas (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Mark Sarvas's Blog

In praise of second novels

I've just launched the latest issue of my newsletter, dealing with the specific problems of the second novel. You can find it at https://tinyletter.com/elegvar

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Published on February 23, 2018 13:18

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Mark is Currently Reading

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Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art

by Jennifer Doyle (Goodreads Author)

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The Inseparables

by Stuart Nadler (Goodreads Author)

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What Belongs to You

by Garth Greenwell (Goodreads Author)

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Jun 27, 2018 05:44PM

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Mark Sarvas and 1 other person liked Jennifer Carson's review of @UGMan: "Brilliant. What is immediately clear is the depth and complexity of this portrayal of a troubled psyche, and more generally, a troubled world. What becomes clear by the end is the depth of sensitivity, heart, and dare-I-say optimism of this most rema" Read more of this review »
Jul 02, 2025 11:45AM · see review
Mark Sarvas made a comment on Sam Hughes’s review of @UGMan " I am SO grateful for your kind, kind words. Thank you! "
May 30, 2025 08:26PM · see review
Mark Sarvas liked Sam Hughes's review of @UGMan: "I am so thankful to ITNA press, Netgalley, and Mark Sarvas for granting me advanced access to this darkly hilarious and humbling depiction before it hits shelves on June 24, 2025. Our main character, who goes by the username @UGMan, harbors a rage li" Read more of this review »
May 30, 2025 08:24PM · see review
Mark Sarvas has read @UGMan by Mark Sarvas (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 08, 2025 04:19PM · like

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Quotes by Mark Sarvas (?)

“Being found out, that's not the worst part, Harry now realizes. The anger, the pain, all the things that will inevitably follow this moment, they're just the fallout. This is the worst moment, the flash point, the cataclysm. For as Harry holds the eyes of his wife, he sees confusion in them--genuine puzzlement--and this is the deepest blow: the realization that until this moment it could not possibly have occurred to her that he would lie to her. But, of course, she doesn't know about all the little lies that preceded this grand one, the painstaking edifice of deceit that's about to collapse. He has hurled a brick through her trust, and although he may spend the rest of his life collecting every last shard, massaging the creaky, fractured pane back into a whole, it will always be warped, irregular, distorting the view on both sides.”
― Mark Sarvas, Harry, Revised

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