
The Extinction of Irena Rey
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Narrated by:
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Lanessa Tremblett
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By:
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Jennifer Croft
About this listen
“Oh my mushrooms, The Extinction of Irena Rey is incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn't put it down.” —New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
From the International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, an utterly beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Grey Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.
The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets—and deceptions—of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.
This hilarious, thought-provoking debut novel is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.©2024 Jennifer Croft (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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- Unabridged
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The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
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Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
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Enlightenment
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits—torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community. It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London.
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Oddly uncompelling
- By mary on 06-16-24
By: Sarah Perry
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The History of Sound
- Stories
- By: Ben Shattuck
- Narrated by: Ben Shattuck, Zachary Chastain, Paul Mescal, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.
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Gorgeous written connected stories
- By Briana R. on 07-22-24
By: Ben Shattuck
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The Book of George
- A Novel
- By: Kate Greathead
- Narrated by: Blair Baker
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; sweet yet noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend; distant from but still reliant on his mother; charmingly funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.
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Lots of potential, little payoff
- By Chalin Smith on 10-24-24
By: Kate Greathead
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Clear
- A Novel
- By: Carys Davies
- Narrated by: Russ Bain
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.
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Yes, Another Island Book
- By Kate Juliff on 11-10-24
By: Carys Davies
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Margo's Got Money Troubles
- A Novel
- By: Rufi Thorpe
- Narrated by: Elle Fanning
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
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I love Margo’s brain and Elle’s voice 👏🏻💕
- By Jessica Larson on 08-19-24
By: Rufi Thorpe
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Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
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Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
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The Morningside
- A Novel
- By: Téa Obreht
- Narrated by: Carlotta Brentan
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family’s past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave.
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Another Beautiful Tale
- By Francis on 04-20-24
By: Téa Obreht
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Homesick
- A Memoir
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Jennifer Croft, Boris Dralyuk, Emily Sutton-Smith
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Sisters Amy and Zoe grow up in Oklahoma, where they are homeschooled for an unexpected reason: Zoe suffers from debilitating and mysterious seizures, spending her childhood in hospitals as she undergoes surgeries. Meanwhile, Amy flourishes intellectually, showing an innate ability to glean a world beyond the troubles in her home life, exploring that world through languages first.
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Goegeous..gorgeous
- By InBetween on 02-04-20
By: Jennifer Croft
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American Rapture
- By: CJ Leede
- Narrated by: Moniqua Plante
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust. Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin… The end times are coming.
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Lord, let's survive the apocalypse as a horny teen
- By Megan on 11-02-24
By: CJ Leede
What listeners say about The Extinction of Irena Rey
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mimi Zeiger
- 06-25-24
good story, unfortunate reading performance
I didn’t like the reader’s interpretation of dialogue. Her “voices” for the characters were annoying.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Lily Arya
- 05-09-24
A book about obsession
What happens when 9 translators get obsessed with the writer they are translating for? Beautifully written but hard to stay focused on content. Made myself finish the book
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- Kirsten H.
- 05-14-24
beautiful language, good questions, unlikeable characters and frustrating ending.
A pet peeve: I thought I was going to lose it every time the narrator pronounced it "Chaise LONG"
I found myself wanting to read Grey Eminence more than The Extinction, wanting to see and live in Białowieża forest more than watch these 9 translators shuffle through their indecision.
Is it a mystery? Yes. But it's unresolved, and not in the way that reveals something new instead. I found the resolution left too many questions about logistics and intent. Why did Irena do what she did? I still don't know. And neither do the translators.
This book gave me a lot of miscellany to think about: the role of translators, of conservation, the invasion of land and mind. But I'm not sure the story landed as well as was planned. Ultimately I was exhausted listening to the petty squabbles of the two main translators, and the jealousy of Spanish around Swedish. I'm unsure why that relationship was even relevant. So many symbols left unexplored in this book. So many people I still don't know.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Audio
- 10-25-24
Annoying vocal fry hurts the book.
The book is great but marred by the narrator’s annoying vocal fry at the end of nearly all of her sentences. Hurts the ears after a while and scratches the mind. It sounds like the narrator just woke up from a long snooze. She could have been directed not to that as she has a pleasant tone and not a bad delivery otherwise. This book deserves to be re-recorded with more meticulous direction.
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- William E. Holcomb
- 12-20-24
Overrated
Terrible reader of a shallow story. There are 1 million books better than this, so move on and pick a different one.
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- igor sapozhnikov
- 05-15-24
Unexpected ending with a brilliant story
Such keen insight into translation as an art and human nature/psyche. So many beautiful descriptions of nature, history and language. A joy to read/listen with a wild ending that left me stunned. Much different than the author’s previous novel, “Homesick,” and delivering just as much soul and introspection. Loved Extinction immensely and looking forward for more.
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- Maria Gutierrez
- 03-22-25
Horrible book to follow
I want my money back. Extremely boring couldn’t get past the 1st couple of chapters
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- VickiT
- 01-12-25
Don’t Get It
Read a lot of books, more than 50 per year, and I didn’t’ understand anything about this book. WSJ had to t as top books ok in 2024. No clue how they conclude this.
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- Kinga
- 03-30-24
Unique plot
Weird, original, most unusual book, not an easy read, your brain hurts trying to keep up. Would love to see Białowieża in Poland some day.
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3 people found this helpful
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- John Horner
- 06-15-24
This book makes no sense to me
Perhaps it’s not my genre, perhaps it’s that it is being read to me. However, I am an hour in, and it is completely frustrating. I don’t know if the translator notes are an aspect of the novel or actually notes from the translator. The fawning of the translators over ‘Irena’, is just odd. The novel jumps from topic to topic. It’s just not worth my time to figure out. On top of that, the narration is a bit stilted.
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1 person found this helpful