Inland

A Novel

By: Téa Obreht

Narrated by: Anna Chlumsky, Edoardo Ballerini, Euan Morton

Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times Best Seller

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: Time • The Washington Post • Esquire • Good Housekeeping • Town & Country • The New York Public Library • The Dallas Morning News • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal • BookPage

The best-selling author of The Tiger’s Wife returns with “a bracingly epic and imaginatively mythic journey across the American West” (Entertainment Weekly).

In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives unfold. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life - her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons, who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home.

Meanwhile, Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted by ghosts. He sees lost souls who want something from him, and he finds reprieve from their longing in an unexpected relationship that inspires a momentous expedition across the West. The way in which Lurie’s death-defying trek at last intersects with Nora’s plight is the surprise and suspense of this brilliant novel.

Mythical, lyrical, and sweeping in scope, Inland is grounded in true but little-known history. It showcases all of Téa Obreht’s talents as a writer, as she subverts and reimagines the myths of the American West, making them entirely - and unforgettably - her own.

Praise for Inland

“As it should be, the landscape of the West itself is a character, thrillingly rendered throughout.... Here, Obreht’s simple but rich prose captures and luxuriates in the West’s beauty and sudden menace. Remarkable in a novel with such a sprawling cast, Obreht also has a poetic touch for writing intricate and precise character descriptions.” (The New York Times Book Review - Editors’ Choice)

“Beautifully wrought.” (Vanity Fair)

“Obreht is the kind of writer who can forever change the way you think about a thing, just through her powers of description.... Inland is an ambitious and beautiful work about many things: immigration, the afterlife, responsibility, guilt, marriage, parenthood, revenge, all the roads and waterways that led to America. Miraculously, it’s also a page-turner and a mystery, as well as a love letter to a camel, and, like a camel, improbable and splendid, something to happily puzzle over at first and take your breath away at the end.” (Elizabeth McCracken, O: The Oprah Magazine)

©2019 Téa Obreht (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A dynamic pair, Anna Chlumsky and Edoardo Ballerini, deliver an emotionally rich performance of this intricately woven story steeped in the Western frontier.... Anna Chlumsky is near perfect as Nora. Chlumsky employs a slight Western drawl and resists the urge to rush the story, naturally lingering on reflections and revelations. Chlumsky's impressive versatility with a variety characters - men, women, and especially children - further enlivens the performance, transporting listeners to this mythic time and place." (AudioFile magazine)

“Obreht brings her extraordinarily intricate worldview, psychological and social acuity, descriptive artistry, and shrewd, witty, and zestful storytelling to another provocative inquiry into the mysteries of place, nature, and human complexities.... Obreht inventively and scathingly dramatizes the delirium of the West - its myths, hardships, greed, racism, sexism, and violence - in a tornadic novel of stoicism, anguish, and wonder.” [Booklist (starred review)]

“A bracingly epic and imaginatively mythic journey across the American West in 1893, in which the lives of a former outlaw and a frontierswoman collide and intertwine. (Entertainment Weekly)

Hypnotic and beautiful

Tea captures the bleak and haunting lives of her characters, and the desolate majesty of their landscapes in a style reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy. Beneath the seemingly stagnant surface of their hard lives there runs a turbulent current of changing times and tragedy. This book was absolutely mesmerizing!

Great writing

4 1/2 stars. The reading starts with a narrator whose cadences and accent are perfect for the subject matter and excellent prose. Unfortunately, when the female voice starts, it’s as if a high-pitched clanging started; without inflection, the words are simply clipped off the page without storytelling or southern accent ability. Nevertheless, Obreht is an excellent writer, and her sweeping tale captures the atmosphere of her chosen era/location. It doesn’t have a sharp story arc, or a lot of plot; this is more for those who enjoy meandering through well-evoked times/places/circumstances they’ve not experienced in their own lives.

Such a good book

I absolutely loved this book. The author wrote in such an authentic voice from the 1800s. The narrarors were so good . I totally dislike Nora, which speaks to how well the author wrote and how well the narrator conveyed her character. My favourite character, however, was the camel. Oh what a story. Thank you to everyone involved with its writing and production

really good

Her style is incredible, I loved the way she writes the landscape into the story, like cormac mccarthy. I didn't love the characters at first, but they grew on me, and felt real by the end. The mysticism does seem like a novelty at first, but it's used to deepen the story, and it works.

If you like westerns . . . and camels

A ghost story featuring a camel in the pioneer west. A love story with the weird wind of the prairie driving the lonely woman a little mad out there alone with her kids. A range war story between two homespun newspapers. A murder mystery - without a murder.

This is a highly imaginative, weird-ass book. It starts out slowly and takes a while to sink in, but turned out to be worth the languid ramp-up.

A hard listen. Better to read this one.

I finished Inland a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't sure how I felt about it then, but the story has stayed with me, and confounded me somewhat. I will leave it to folks smarter than I to figure out what I missed.
The main problem with listening to Inland is the narration by the actor narrating Lurie. The voice is soft and dreamy, appropriate for a character speaking of memories, but difficult to hear while riding in a car even with the sound at full volume. The words on the page would have had more impact, as Lurie's life was full of sadness and desperation.
The story takes place with Nora, as she explains her life through her thoughts, on how she came to be in Arizona, needing water desperately, on this particular day in 1893. Lurie's life is also told in retrospect, ending on that very same day in Arizona when the two stories finally come together.
The characters are richly drawn. The story is beautifully written. The camel is fun. Wish I had read it instead.
Our book club read this as our month selection.

overall very good

it appears to be disjointed at times but all comes together at the end. great performance

A Satisfying Atmosphere...of Want (Thirst)!

This fine literary novel led me by the snout throughTéa Obrecht's imaginary desert landscapes into spriit of human migration and survival. Beautiful and constantly engaged with wispy promises of tales advancing toward thirst-quenching resolution....by the end, when it comes together, you are wise enough not to mistake survival for fortune's smile.

Obrecht plys some delightful tricks. The language, the dialogue, has a frankly "pretend" old-fashioned quality, as the characters speak with astounding precision and erudition . It gave me joy! Obrecht teases with matter-of-fact facts just laying around to be explained somewhere ahead.

Narration served the text well, especially Edoardo Ballerini's gravel-voiced confessions. Euan Morton's brief segment was well-read but broke the 4th wall, by inserting the thought that Anna Chlumsky had flubbed that section and it had to be rescued.

Dream-like and meandering

Narrators were not terribly engaging and I had to restart the book several times. Ending struggled to bring the two storylines together in a way that felt complete

Utterly Satisfyingly

Wow. Just finished this after a false start over a year ago. This book takes attention to sort out the two story lines. A Turk and a camel Texas 1865 and a woman in Arizona territory 1890something. Not for bedtime reading. Characters all unique compelling. Situation described in detail never before encountered. Worth all the attention