
Choice
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

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sofia Engstrand
-
Antonio Aakeel
-
Shaheen Khan
-
By:
-
Neel Mukherjee
About this listen
An ingenious, devastating, explosive novel about the ramifications of choice from "one of the most original and talented authors working today" (NPR).
"How ought one to live?" This is the question that obsesses London-based publisher Ayush, driving him to question every act of consumption. He embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him: his practical economist husband; their twins; and even the authors he edits and publishes. One of those authors, a mysterious M. N. Opie, writes a story about a young academic involved in a car accident that causes her life to veer in an unexpected direction. Another author, an economist, describes how the gift of a cow to an impoverished family on the West Bengal-Bangladesh border sets them on a startling path to tragedy.
Together, these connected narratives raise the question: How free are we really to make our own choices? In a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, Neel Mukherjee confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life.
©2024 Neel Mukherjee (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Extinction of Irena Rey
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Lanessa Tremblett
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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, Gray 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.
-
-
Unique plot
- By Kinga on 03-30-24
By: Jennifer Croft
-
Question 7
- By: Richard Flanagan
- Narrated by: Richard Flanagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.
-
-
Who loves longer?
- By Diane on 03-26-25
By: Richard Flanagan
-
Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Anonymous User on 06-24-24
By: Hisham Matar
-
Held
- A Novel
- By: Anne Michaels
- Narrated by: Anne Michaels
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures
-
-
Would give six stars if possible
- By love it on 08-31-24
By: Anne Michaels
-
Gliff
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Eliot Sumner
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.
-
-
No other author comes close!
- By Franki on 02-08-25
By: Ali Smith
-
The Extinction of Irena Rey
- By: Jennifer Croft
- Narrated by: Lanessa Tremblett
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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, Gray 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.
-
-
Unique plot
- By Kinga on 03-30-24
By: Jennifer Croft
-
Question 7
- By: Richard Flanagan
- Narrated by: Richard Flanagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.
-
-
Who loves longer?
- By Diane on 03-26-25
By: Richard Flanagan
-
Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Anonymous User on 06-24-24
By: Hisham Matar
-
Held
- A Novel
- By: Anne Michaels
- Narrated by: Anne Michaels
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures
-
-
Would give six stars if possible
- By love it on 08-31-24
By: Anne Michaels
-
Gliff
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Eliot Sumner
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.
-
-
No other author comes close!
- By Franki on 02-08-25
By: Ali Smith
-
The Lives of Others
- By: Neel Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Raj Ghatak
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The aging patriarch and matriarch of the Ghosh family preside over their large household, made up of their five adult children and their respective children, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. Each set of family members occupies a floor of the home, in accordance to their standing within the family.
-
-
extraordinary insights
- By Susan on 07-13-15
By: Neel Mukherjee
-
The Devil Raises His Own
- By: Scott Phillips
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Los Angeles, 1916: Photographer Bill Ogden has opened a portrait studio in the seedy noir world of early Hollywood, where he is joined by his granddaughter, Flavia—a woman in need of a fresh start after bludgeoning her abusive husband to death in Wichita. Though his business is mainly legit, Bill finds himself brushing up against the “blue movie” porn industry growing in the shadows of the motion picture mainstream. When a series of grisly murders take place across the city, Bill and his capable granddaughter are pulled into events as tricky and tangled as anything this side of The Big Sleep.
-
-
what a wild ride!
- By brian on 08-23-24
By: Scott Phillips
-
The Anthropologists
- By: Aysegül Savas
- Narrated by: Kathryn Aboya
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”
-
-
Can't say it's good
- By Moraz on 12-22-24
By: Aysegül Savas
-
Against the World
- Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars
- By: Tara Zahra
- Narrated by: Natasha Soudek
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters ranging from women's rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath. In this sweeping work of history, Tara Zahra examines how nationalism, rather than internationalism, came to ensnare world politics in the early twentieth century.
-
-
Fascinating content narrated like a bad YA novel
- By Moonlight on 04-08-25
By: Tara Zahra
-
Enlightenment
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Oddly uncompelling
- By mary on 06-16-24
By: Sarah Perry
-
Women and Children First
- A Novel
- By: Alina Grabowski
- Narrated by: Abigail Reno, EJ Lavery, Maria McCann, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town’s industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around the tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper.
-
-
The Relationships of Mother’s & Daughters!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-30-24
By: Alina Grabowski
-
The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
-
-
1935 Nebraska Dustbowl drama with a Supernatural twist.
- By CarolynL on 03-16-25
By: Karen Russell
-
This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
-
-
Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
- By Thomp/Suis on 05-17-24
By: Claire Messud
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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
-
Elena Knows
- By: Claudia Piñeiro, Frances Riddle - translator
- Narrated by: Sally Masterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Rita is found dead in a church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.
-
-
Super depressing but extremely well written and narrated
- By Lenny C. Husen on 03-07-24
By: Claudia Piñeiro, and others
-
Eurotrash
- A Novel
- By: Christian Kracht, Daniel Bowles - translator
- Narrated by: Kevin Kemp
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From “the great German-language writer of his generation” (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Christian Kracht’s career narrated by an eponymous “Christian”. Eurotrash begins in Zurich, where Christian has returned to care for his 80-year-old mother after her discharge from a psychiatric institution. Confronting the dark shadows of his family’s past—particularly his grandfather’s strong ties with the Nazi regime—and struggling to navigate the emotionally wrenching terrain of his relationship with his mother, he sets off on a road trip with her.
-
-
I loved the interaction between mother and son
- By BBWrighter on 03-05-25
By: Christian Kracht, and others
-
All Things Are Too Small
- Essays in Praise of Excess
- By: Becca Rothfeld
- Narrated by: Ruth Crawford
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All Things Are Too Small is brilliant cultural and literary critic Becca Rothfeld’s plea for derangement: imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment in all domains of life, from literature to romance. In a healthy culture, Rothfeld argues, economic security allows for wild aesthetic experimentation and excess, yet in our contemporary world, we’ve got it flipped. The gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, while we compensate with misguided attempts to effect equality in love and art, where it does not belong.
-
-
Smart and clever
- By David on 12-04-24
By: Becca Rothfeld
If I had to choose between Parts 1, Part 2, and Part 3
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the first, a man named Ayusha works in London publishing. He gradually chooses to live selflessly, eliminating meat, plastic and other modern conveniences from his life. This has an adverse impact on his economist husband Luke and their twins, Masha and Sasha. Ayusha becomes increasingly obsessed, while Luke tries to retain their careful life. The story is wild and sometimes upsetting, but Ayusha’s actions are rational from his perspective—rational but dangerous.
In the second story, a middling London professor is involved in a possible hit-and-run with her gig driver. She becomes obsessed with the driver, an Eritrean immigrant, as well as her British family’s role in India during the British Raj. She didn’t show much self-awareness, to me, and I found her choices annoying and her story the least interesting.
The third story is fascinating. An impoverished family in rural India is gifted a cow by a nongovernmental organization to lift them out of poverty. The unintended consequences are sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking. As in the other stories, they raise questions about hopeful choices that result in, well, problems. The mother and her two children are beautifully drawn, fully sympathetic and good company.
Neel Mukherjee is a favorite writer. His novels are political, in the sense that governing policies and economics guide his characters, but never didactic or hectoring. He creates ethical challenges for his characters, but again he does it subtly and without bombast. Mukherjee gets people—their needs, their motivations, their frustrations. His earlier novel, “The Lives of Others,” was long but compelling, with beautifully realized characters from all economic backgrounds. “Choice” is shorter but similarly thoughtful and enjoyable.
The three narrators were uniformly excellent.
Three Disparate Takes
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Human Stories with no real climax or conclusion
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.