Listen

A Novel

De: Sacha Bronwasser, David Colmer - translator

Narrado por: Nina Yndis

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2025

A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become a Dutch sensation

In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she'd been reckoning with in school.

But years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in aftermath, in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she was sure she could leave behind comes flooding back, as do the questions she thought she could live with leaving unanswered.

Told in alternating voices, this “highly ingenious” (NRC) coming-of-age story asks important and haunting questions about the thin line between remembering and recording, seeing and being seen, coincidence and fate, revenge and reclamation—and what it means to walk this boundary.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Listen is a meticulously constructed yet unnervingly quiet thriller that stays under readers’ skin from start to finish. [A] unique, twisty meditation on terrorism, art and the influence of various media on our lives. It’s so compellingly well-crafted that it invites rereading to fully appreciate certain lines—and its devastating title—once all is revealed.”
—BookPage (starred review)

“Bronwasser makes the banal exceptional with an eye that not only looks but sees.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Cannily constructed and gracefully written, this thought-provoking literary thriller offers a charcuterie board’s worth of rewards.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[Bronwasser] grabs her readers by the throat with a meticulously constructed and convincing story that gets under your skin from the very first page.”
—De Telegraaf

“Sacha Bronwasser describes Parisian life irresistibly, in a thought-provoking novel. It’s a rare thing, a book that can be read as simply a ‘good read’ but with enough in it to make you think.”
—de Volkskrant

“A highly ingenious novel that is also moving . . . Listen is somewhat reminiscent of W.F. Hermans and Peter Terrin, with its sense of a stalkerish, indefinable foreboding, while the story is nevertheless resolute and evocative, and told in a way that definitely rewards the reader.”
—NRC

“Ingenious new novel . . . Masterfully constructed . . . A novel that you can only admire.”
—Trouw

“Once you understand the full, wry relevance of the title on the very last pages, only then do you fully realise how masterfully constructed this compelling book is. The skilfully written, suspenseful story turns out to be an intelligent and ambiguous reflection on remembering and recording, on seeing and being seen, on coincidence and makeability, and on the ethics of art and of the appropriation of other people's stories. The question that continues to haunt you at the end is to what extent the novel is an act of revenge and, as such, an example of the unethical appropriation it denounces. Good, clever, deep. Without question premier league, this novel.”
—Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, author of Grand Hotel Europa