Universality
A Novel
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Universality
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Narrated by:
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Norma Butikofer
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Anushka Chakravarti
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Clare Corbett
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Daniel Weyman
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By:
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Natasha Brown
About this listen
Remember—words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of power, hailed as “a nesting doll of satire that leaves readers uncertain where their loyalties lie” (Financial Times)
“Original, vital, and unputdownable.”—Tess Gunty, National Book Award-winning author of The Rabbit Hutch
Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar.
An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic newspaper columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers. Through a voyeuristic lens, and with a simmering power, Universality focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.
A thrilling novel from one of the most acclaimed young novelists working today, Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language. It dares you to look away.
©2025 Natasha Brown (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Meh...
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Critic reviews
"Brown is one of our most intelligent voices writing today, able to block out the short-term chatter around both identity and language in order to excavate much more uncomfortable truths.”—The Guardian
“[Brown] has a sharp, unrelenting eye for the tangled dynamics that simmer underneath the surface of social interactions. . . . Universality is the sort of book that forces you to question yourself.”—The Independent
“Brings to mind a modern Jane Austen.”—The Financial Times
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.
By: Jason Mott
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Ask Me Again
- A Novel
- By: Clare Sestanovich
- Narrated by: Julia Knippen
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1
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Story3 out of 5 stars 1
At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class south Brooklyn; he comes from the super rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, often insecure; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. These two questers are drawn together in a strange and profound friendship, tested by forces larger than themselves. As Eva follows a path of conventional achievement—a prestigious degree, a formative romance, the start of an ambitious career—Jamie seeks out more radical experiments in finding himself.
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The Echoes
- A Novel
- By: Evie Wyld
- Narrated by: Sebastian Humphreys, Vivien Carter
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 12
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 12
Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend, Hannah, lost in grief in the apartment they shared and begins to realize how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah was haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seemed to offer the potential of a fresh new chapter, but the past refused to stay hidden.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Nothing to keep me interested.
- By Cari Brotherton on 03-07-25
By: Evie Wyld
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Antarctica
- Stories
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Sheena May, Aoife McMahon, Aidan Quinn, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
From the titular story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind—to sleep with another man—Antarctica draws listeners into a world of obsession, betrayal, and fragile relationships. Cordelia wakes on the last day of the twentieth century and sets off to keep a date nine years in the waiting. Frank Corso mourns the curious disappearance of his daughter and tries desperately to reach out to his shattered wife. Throughout the collection, Keegan's characters inhabit a world where dreams, memory, and chance can have crippling consequences.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible, but out of order and missing one story
- By Jason on 07-26-23
By: Claire Keegan
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The Grand Scheme of Things
- A Novel
- By: Warona Jay
- Narrated by: Ony Uhiara, Sam Stafford
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1
Meet Relebogile Naledi Mpho Moruakgomo. Or, for short, Eddie: an aspiring playwright who dreams of making it big in London’s theater world. But after repeated rejections from white talent agents, Eddie suspects her non-white sounding name might be the problem. Enter Hugo Lawrence Smith: good looking, well-connected, charismatic and…very white. Stifled by his law degree and looking for a way out of the corporate world, he finds a kindred spirit in Eddie after a chance encounter at a cafe. Together they devise a plan, one which will see Eddie’s play on stage and Hugo’s name in lights.
By: Warona Jay
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Heart, Be at Peace
- A Novel
- By: Donal Ryan
- Narrated by: Anne Marie Ryan, Ciaran O'Brien, Donal Ryan, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2
From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them
By: Donal Ryan
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The Wardrobe Department
- By: Elaine Garvey
- Narrated by: Denise Gough
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2
Mairéad works all hours in a run-down West End theatre’s wardrobe department, her whole existence made up of threads and needles, running errands to mend shoes, fixing broken zips and handwashing underwear. She must also do her best to avoid groping hands backstage and the terrible bullying of the show’s producer. But, despite her skill and growing experience, half of Mairéad remains in her windy, hedge-filled home in Ireland, and the life she abandoned there. In noughties London, she has the potential to be somebody completely new – why, then, does she feel so stuck?
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5 out of 5 stars
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My review of the wardrobe department
- By iggynut on 02-28-25
By: Elaine Garvey
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Code Noir
- Fictions
- By: Canisia Lubrin, Christina Sharpe - foreword
- Narrated by: Mia Golden, Marsha Regis, K.C. Collins, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure, deceptively simple, is based on the infamous Code Noir, a set of real historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multilayered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.
By: Canisia Lubrin, and others
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Theory & Practice
- By: Michelle de Kretser
- Narrated by: Melissa Madden Gray
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5
It's 1986, and "beautiful, radical ideas" are in the air. The narrator of Theory & Practice, a young woman originally from Sri Lanka, arrives in Melbourne for graduate school to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In the bohemian neighborhood of St. Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed relationship." They become lovers, and the narrator's feminism comes up against her jealousy. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf's diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, and throws her own work into disarray.
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Goddess Complex
- A Novel
- By: Sanjena Sathian
- Narrated by: Rukhmani K. Desai
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story4 out of 5 stars 8
Sanjana Satyananda is trying to recover her life. It’s been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a disagreement about whether to have children. Now, Sanjana is struggling to resurrect her busted anthropology dissertation and crashing at her annoyingly perfect sister’s while her well-adjusted peers obsess over marriages, mortgages, and motherhood. Sanjana needs to move forward—and finalize her divorce, ASAP.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Internal and External conflict of being able to bare children
- By Amazon Customer on 06-04-25
By: Sanjena Sathian
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The Californians
- A Novel
- By: Brian Castleberry
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Rob Shapiro, Nancy Peterson, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 4
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Story3 out of 5 stars 4
It’s 2024, and Tobey Harlan—college dropout, temporary waiter, recently dumped—steals from the wall of his father’s house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey’s just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to a notorious tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon. A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn—German-Jewish immigrant, resident of the Lower East Side—inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens.
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Nesting
- A Novel
- By: Roisín O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Louisa Harland
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
On a bright spring afternoon, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, she straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe—and that this time, when she leaves, she must stay away. On the surface, she has a perfect life: her husband, Ryan, is a good provider, sometimes even kind and attentive, from a nice Irish family, and they have another baby on the way.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Jarring narration at times
- By Anonymous User on 04-04-25
By: Roisín O'Donnell
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The Dream Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Barton Caplan
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 135
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Story4 out of 5 stars 135
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The next parable of the sower
- By Jess on 03-18-25
By: Laila Lalami
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We Pretty Pieces of Flesh
- A Novel
- By: Colwill Brown
- Narrated by: Colwill Brown
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.” But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace―the girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are.
By: Colwill Brown
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Fundamentally
- A Novel
- By: Nussaibah Younis
- Narrated by: Sarah Slimani
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 17
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalization, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why not? Abandoned by her mother and devastated by unrequited love, she leaps at the chance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Narration was Fantastic
- By Ameera on 05-15-25
By: Nussaibah Younis
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Luminous
- By: Silvia Park
- Narrated by: Eric Yang
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In a reunified Korea of the near future, the sun beats down on a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, broken down for parts. Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through the scraps, searching for a piece that might support her failing body. There among the piles of trash, something catches her eye: a robot boy—so lifelike and strange, unlike anything she’s ever seen before.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant writing, mesmerizing story!
- By jc on 03-14-25
By: Silvia Park