the fault in our star

ALSO BY JOHN GREEN

Looking for Alaska
An Abundance of Katherines
Paper Towns
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
WITH DAVID LEVITHAN

DUTTON BOOKS | An imprint of Penguin Group
(USA) Inc.

DUTTON BOOKS
A MEMBER OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
Published by the Penguin Group | Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. | Penguin Group
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This book isa work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by John Green
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CIP Data is available.

5/489Published in the United States by Dutton Books, a member of Penguin
Group (USA) Inc. 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
www.penguin.com/teen
Designed by Irene Vandervoort
ISBN 978-1-101-56918-4

TO ESTHER EARL

Contents

EPIGRAPH
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT

8/489

CHAPTER NINECHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip
Man faced the ocean: “Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealerrevelator. Look
at it, rising up and rising down, taking
everything with it.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Water,” the Dutchman said. “Well,
and time.”

—PETER VAN HOUTEN, An Imperial
Affliction

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is not so much an author’s note as an
author’s reminder of what was printed in
small type a few pages ago: This book is a
work of fiction. I made it up.
Neither novels northeir readers benefit
from attempts to divine whether any facts
hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the
very idea that made-up stories can matter,
which is sort of the foundational assumption
of our species.
I appreciate your cooperation in this
matter.

CHAPTER ONE

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year,
my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left thehouse,
spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the
same book over and over, ate infrequently,
and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free
time to thinking about death.
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or
website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in
fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer.
Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer...