Fight Club

About Fight Club

Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk, chronicling an anonymous protagonist who is struggling with a growing discomfort with consumerism as a way of life, and with changes in the state of masculinity in American culture. To overcome this, he establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into the film of the same name. The movie became a pop culture phenomenon, yet, in the wake of the movie's popularity, the novel — the first published by the writer — then was criticized for its content, and mainly for explicitly depicting violence.

Chuck Palahniuk first tried publishing a novel — Invisible Monsters — but publishers rejected it as too disturbing, so he concentrated on writing Fight Club. Initially it was published as a short story (chapter 6 in the novel) in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness, but he then expanded it to novel length.