Author: Veronica Roth

Cover artist: Joel Tippie

Country: United States

Language: English

Series: Divergent trilogy

Genre: Science fiction, dystopia, 

young adult fiction

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Publication date: April 26, 2011

In a post-apocalyptic Chicago, survivors are divided into five factions based on their dispositions: Abnegation, the selfless; Amity, the peaceful; Candor, the honest; Dauntless, the brave; and Erudite, the intelligent. Each year, all sixteen-year-olds take an aptitude test that determines the faction for which they are best suited. After receiving the results, test takers choose a faction at the Choosing Ceremony, no matter what their results were. Those who do not complete initiation into their new faction become "factionless" and are forced to live in poverty on the streets of the city.

Sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior is born into an Abnegation family. She doesn't feel she belongs in Abnegation because she doesn't see herself as selfless. Her aptitude test results are inconclusive and indicate aptitude for three factions – Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. Beatrice's test administrator, Tori, warns her never to tell anyone that her results were inconclusive as this marks her as "Divergent". Beatrice agonizes over Choosing Day, unsure about staying in Abnegation with her parents or moving to a different faction. On Choosing Day, Beatrice decides to leave Abnegation and join Dauntless. Her brother Caleb chooses Erudite.

The first task that all of the new Dauntless initiates have to do is jump on a moving train. One of the other initiates, Christina, helps Beatrice climb on the train. As Beatrice looks back, she sees a boy who wasn't able to jump on the train recede in the distance. They take the train all the way to the Dauntless headquarters where they are instructed to jump on to its roof. Most of the initiates make it, but one girl falls to her death. The Dauntless initiates have to jump into the compound entrance from the roof, Beatrice decides to jump first. When she reaches the bottom and lands in a net, she tells Four, the Dauntless instructor, that her name is Tris.

Initiation into Dauntless is composed of three stages. The first involves learning how to handle guns and knives and hand-to-hand combat with other initiates. Tris lacks the physical strength of most of her fellow initiates but finishes in sixth place by beating the higher-ranked Molly. Along the way, a relationship starts to emerge between Tris and Four, and Tris gets pummeled by Peter in a fight. When the rankings for Stage 1 of initiation are announced, a jealous Peter, who finished second, stabs first-place Edward in the eye with a butter knife during the night. Edward then leaves Dauntless to be Factionless, and his girlfriend Myra follows him out of Dauntless.