
4 3 2 1
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $37.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Paul Auster
-
By:
-
Paul Auster
About this listen
"...listening to 4 3 2 1 in audio is worth the commitment, thanks to the author’s easy-on-the-ears baritone" — Newsday
This program is narrated by—and includes a bonus interview with—the author.
Paul Auster’s greatest, most heartbreaking and satisfying novel—a sweeping and surprising story of birthright and possibility, of love and of life itself: a masterpiece.
Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, listeners will take in each Ferguson’s pleasures and ache from each Ferguson’s pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson’s life rushes on.
As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that listeners have never heard from Auster before. 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.
Editorial reviews
Editors Select, February 2017 - Archibald Isaac Ferguson is the central character of 4 3 2 1. He's known as Archie by some and as Ferguson by others, and you get to know him from the time he is born through the multiple life outcomes explored by author Paul Auster. Through each nuanced version of his life, I became equally attached to every Archie and every Ferguson revealed to me. Living in and having grown up in Essex County, NJ, I know the towns and landmarks that Auster has set this novel in (my parents also brought me to the now-departed Grunnings Ice Cream parlor). So as I drive through these neighborhoods, I can imagine Archie walking down the street or playing baseball in a local school field. Listening to Paul Auster narrate is like having him in the seat next to me, with the open book on his lap as he calmly reads aloud. This is a book to be savored and allowed to unfold at its own beautiful pace. Tricia, Audible Editor
Critic reviews
"[Paul] Auster's deep understanding of his characters, soothing baritone, and skillful pacing...deliver an immensely satisfying experience overall for listeners" -AudioFile Magazine
"[Paul] Auster’s compelling, mesmerizing voice so embodies all the Fergusons that “4321” is ...worth an entire week’s worth of listening." -Winston-Salem Journal
"[L]istening to “4 3 2 1” in audio is worth the commitment, thanks to the author’s easy-on-the-ears baritone." -Newsday
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Baumgartner
- A Novel
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next 40 years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.
-
-
A Great Listen
- By Amazon Customer on 11-17-23
By: Paul Auster
-
The New York Trilogy
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paul Auster's signature work, The New York Trilogy, consists of three interlocking novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room - haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller.
-
-
Perhaps more interesting than important
- By Darwin8u on 10-04-13
By: Paul Auster
-
Moon Palace
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Against the mythical dreamscape of America, Auster brilliantly weaves the bizarre narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg, an orphan searching for love, his father, and the key to the riddle of his origin and fate.
-
-
Pointless
- By Or Avivi on 11-28-24
By: Paul Auster
-
4 3 2 1 [Danish Edition]
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Becker
- Length: 34 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paul Austers største, mest hjerteskærende og overbevisende roman. En overvældende og overraskende fortælling om arv og miljø, om kærlighed og livet selv. Den 3. marts 1947 bliver Archibald Isaac Ferguson født på hospitalet i New Jersey. Fra det øjeblik han kommer til verden, tager familiens liv fire samtidige og uafhængige retninger. Hver af de fire versioner af Ferguson bliver tryllebundet af den skønne og mageløse Amy Schneiderman, og hver af de fire Ferguson'er får hver deres egen helt enestående relation til hende. Som læser følger man alle fire i medgang og modgang. Forskellige liv og dog det samme.
-
-
If only I could understand Danish!!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-07-18
By: Paul Auster
-
Invisible
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster's fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.
-
-
One of Auster's Best
- By David and Shoshana Cooper on 02-06-10
By: Paul Auster
-
Oracle Night
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, 34-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.
-
-
The Master Speaks
- By Dean on 09-20-05
By: Paul Auster
-
Baumgartner
- A Novel
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next 40 years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.
-
-
A Great Listen
- By Amazon Customer on 11-17-23
By: Paul Auster
-
The New York Trilogy
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paul Auster's signature work, The New York Trilogy, consists of three interlocking novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room - haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller.
-
-
Perhaps more interesting than important
- By Darwin8u on 10-04-13
By: Paul Auster
-
Moon Palace
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Against the mythical dreamscape of America, Auster brilliantly weaves the bizarre narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg, an orphan searching for love, his father, and the key to the riddle of his origin and fate.
-
-
Pointless
- By Or Avivi on 11-28-24
By: Paul Auster
-
4 3 2 1 [Danish Edition]
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Becker
- Length: 34 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paul Austers største, mest hjerteskærende og overbevisende roman. En overvældende og overraskende fortælling om arv og miljø, om kærlighed og livet selv. Den 3. marts 1947 bliver Archibald Isaac Ferguson født på hospitalet i New Jersey. Fra det øjeblik han kommer til verden, tager familiens liv fire samtidige og uafhængige retninger. Hver af de fire versioner af Ferguson bliver tryllebundet af den skønne og mageløse Amy Schneiderman, og hver af de fire Ferguson'er får hver deres egen helt enestående relation til hende. Som læser følger man alle fire i medgang og modgang. Forskellige liv og dog det samme.
-
-
If only I could understand Danish!!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-07-18
By: Paul Auster
-
Invisible
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster's fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.
-
-
One of Auster's Best
- By David and Shoshana Cooper on 02-06-10
By: Paul Auster
-
Oracle Night
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, 34-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.
-
-
The Master Speaks
- By Dean on 09-20-05
By: Paul Auster
-
Burning Boy
- The Life and Work of Stephen Crane
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 35 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age 28.
-
-
My New Go To - Paul Auster.
- By James Bernard Kane on 01-17-23
By: Paul Auster
-
The Brooklyn Follies
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore, a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York".
-
-
Brooklyn IS Still the World
- By Roni on 04-12-07
By: Paul Auster
-
Leviathan
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When his closest friend, Benjamin Sachs, accidentally blows himself up on a Wisconsin road, Peter Aaron attempts to piece together the life that led to Sachs' tragic demise and determine the reason for his death.
-
-
Better than the "trilogy"
- By P K on 06-09-11
By: Paul Auster
-
The Book of Illusions
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After losing his wife and two young sons in an airplane crash, professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he sees a clip from a lost film by the silent comedian Hector Mann. Zimmer soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to study the works of this mysterious figure who vanished from sight in 1929.
-
-
Hmmm....
- By Gene on 10-05-04
By: Paul Auster
-
4 3 2 1
- By: Paul Auster, Benito Gómez Ibáñez - traductor
- Narrated by: Germán Gijón
- Length: 38 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
El único hecho inmutable en la vida de Ferguson es que nació el 3 de marzo de 1947 en Newark, Nueva Jersey. A partir de ese momento, varios caminos se abren ante él y le llevarán a vivir cuatro vidas completamente distintas, a crecer y a explorar de formas diferentes el amor, la amistad, la familia, el arte, la política e incluso la muerte, con algunos de los acontecimientos que han marcado la segunda mitad del siglo XX americano como telón de fondo.
-
-
una historia monumental!! (o quizás cuatro)
- By pancho vila on 12-18-21
By: Paul Auster, and others
-
Timbuktu
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mr. Bones, the canine hero of this astonishing book, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant and troubled homeless man from Brooklyn. As Willy's body slowly expires, he sets off with Mr. Bones for Baltimore in search of his high-school English teacher and a new home for his companion. Mr. Bones is our witness during their journey, and out of his thoughts, Paul Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in American fiction.
-
-
Should I Have Said Gehrig?
- By Dubi on 11-10-14
By: Paul Auster
-
Here and Now
- Letters (2008–2011)
- By: Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other’s books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, “God willing, strike sparks off each other.” Here and Now is the result of that proposal: the epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to incest, philosophy to politics....
-
-
Euridite Bromance
- By Dale C. on 08-08-24
By: Paul Auster, and others
-
Winter Journal
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Facing his 63rd winter, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations - both pleasurable and painful. Thirty years after the publication of The Invention of Solitude, in which he wrote so movingly about fatherhood, Auster gives us a second unconventional memoir in which he writes about his mother's life and death. Winter Journal is a highly personal meditation on the body, time, and memory, by one of our most intellectually elegant writers.
-
-
Memorable
- By Diane on 09-02-12
By: Paul Auster
-
Sunset Park
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Paul Auster
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An enigmatic young man employed as a trash-out worker in southern Florida obsessively photographing thousands of abandoned objects left behind by the evicted families. A group of young people squatting in an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The Hospital for Broken Things, which specializes in repairing the artifacts of a vanished world. William Wyler's 1946 classic The Best Years of Our Lives. These are just some of the elements Auster magically weaves together in this immensely moving novel about contemporary America and its ghosts.
-
-
Lovely book
- By paula on 02-27-11
By: Paul Auster
-
Mr. Vertigo
- By: Paul Auster
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the late 1920's, the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone, and Walt is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by the mysterious Hungarian Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. The vaudeville act that results from Walt's marvelous new abiltiy takes them across a vast and vibrant country, where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob.
-
-
I take it all back! Love the book
- By Chris Reich on 07-24-15
By: Paul Auster
-
2666
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, and others
- Length: 39 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
-
-
The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- By William on 01-05-10
By: Roberto Bolaño
-
Inventing the Renaissance
- The Myth of a Golden Age
- By: Ada Palmer
- Narrated by: Candida Gubbins
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the darkness of a plagued and war-torn Middle Ages, the Renaissance (we’re told) heralds the dawning of a new world—a halcyon age of art, prosperity, and rebirth. Hogwash! or so says award-winning novelist and historian Ada Palmer. In Inventing the Renaissance, Palmer turns her witty and irreverent eye on the fantasies we’ve told ourselves about Europe’s not-so-golden age, myths she sets right with sharp clarity.
-
-
Completely changed my perspective of Machiavelli
- By Amazon Customer on 04-30-25
By: Ada Palmer
Narrated by the author
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Gift that keeps giving
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Starts Out Great...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant historical fiction at its luminous best
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Could not put this down!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A masterful work
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book is read by the author and he does a nice job, it’s fun to hear his prose as he imagined it being spoken.
It’s a long trip but worth the journey
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What made the experience of listening to 4 3 2 1 the most enjoyable?
I really like the fact that it was read by the author, so that I was able to hear the cadence in which it was meant to be heard.What other book might you compare 4 3 2 1 to and why?
I would compare this book to City on Fire and A Little Lie both of which I would really recommend.What about Paul Auster’s performance did you like?
I actually loved the performance but I did speed it up to 1.25x which resulted in a slight octave raise to the narrators voice. This made it a little easier to relate to him being a young man. He also did not attempt to fein female voices.Any additional comments?
If you are to purchase this novel, be ready for the long haul. I listened to this over a period of 3 days and couldn't put it down. This was my first Paul Auster book and I definitely don't think it will be my last.Really loved this novel
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting, but not amazing enough to be so long
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
amazing and fresh multiple storyline. ..aost sci-f
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.