Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Disappearing Earth

By: Julia Phillips
Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

National Book Award Finalist
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award

National Best Seller

"Splendidly imagined... Thrilling" (Simon Winchester)
"A genuine masterpiece" (Gary Shteyngart)

Spellbinding, moving - evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world - this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.

Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty - densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska - and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.

In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

©2019 Julia Phillips (P)2019 Random House Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“Mesmerizing.... The mystery of two sisters’ disappearance alternately ebbs and intensifies over the course of a year, [as] each chapter dips into the life of a different girl or woman [on] Kamchatka. The story reads as a page-turner without relying on any cheap narrative tricks to propel it forward, and the strength of Phillips’s writing - her careful attention to character and tone - will grip you right up until the final heart-stopping pages.” (Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair)

“Accomplished and gripping.... The volcano-spiked Kamchatka Peninsula in Far East Russia, where the tundra still supports herds of reindeer and the various Native groups who depend on them, is the evocative setting of Phillips’ novel. In fresh and unpredictable scenes depicting broken friendships and failed marriages, strained family gatherings, and rehearsals of a Native dance troupe, Phillips’ spellbinding prose is saturated with sensuous nuance and emotional intensity, as she subtly traces the shadows of Russia’s past and illuminates today’s daunting complexities of gender and identity, expectations and longing.” (Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review)

“A superb debut - brilliant. Daring, nearly flawless. A crime jump-starts Disappearing Earth; the novel exposes the ways in which the women of Kamchatka are fragmented not only by [a] kidnapping, but by place [and] identity...Phillips describes the region with a cartographer’s precision and an ethnographer’s clarity, drawing an emblematic cast.... There will be those eager to designate Disappearing Earth a thriller by focusing on the whodunit rather than what the tragedy reveals about the women in and around it. Phillips’ deep examination of loss and longing is a testament to the novel’s power.” (Ivy Pochoda, The New York Times Book Review)

What listeners say about Disappearing Earth

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    506
  • 4 Stars
    374
  • 3 Stars
    199
  • 2 Stars
    88
  • 1 Stars
    65
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    593
  • 4 Stars
    286
  • 3 Stars
    116
  • 2 Stars
    34
  • 1 Stars
    26
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    456
  • 4 Stars
    282
  • 3 Stars
    163
  • 2 Stars
    77
  • 1 Stars
    73

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Unforgettable

Marvelous language; great story; mystery with unexpected twists; richly drawn characters; a spiritual journey; exciting and unexpected ending. Among the best books you will ever read by any author. And, the audio version narration is tops!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Very good….not great!

Enjoyed the time jump narrative and the narrator was talented…didn’t care for the ending after such a buildup

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The anti-thriller that breaks your heart

There is so much to love about this novel. The structure, the prose, the heart. But it is the combination of everything that makes Disappearing Earth a special book. In the hands of a lesser writer, the structure of DE might feel wandering or disconnected, but not with Phillips. Phillips guides us around the rock of the disappearance of two girls as we discover just how far the waves of such an act can reach. Its a beautiful book, beautifully narrated. Cannot recommend enough.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

summer read

More characters than I could audibly track, but a pleasant story. Our book group choice per NY Times review.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Spell binding

A wonderfully narrated story filled with suspense and great life lessons about what to believe in. Only struggle was the Russian names but that was probably good for me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Long and wordy. Hard to stay with it.

Not my favorite. Good characterizations but story not strong enough. I can't recommend this book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Why did I need to meet all of these characters?

I'm quoting a previous reviewer who couldn't have said it better.
"There are just way too many voices in this story. Each vignette is very well written. But it felt relentless, one after the other, having to meet new characters and get inside their heads, only to abandon most of them completely."
I liked some of the characters we meet early in the story, but by the end I wasn't sure why they were introduced at all. If there was a connection to them in the end, I missed it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

book? interesting. Audible? missed

this book review has more to do with audible. where the heck are the book notes at the end?
I realize once again after a book club meeting that audible does not provide the acknowledgement, or book notes, let alone discussion questions (in this book there may not have been any discussion questions)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

What a madly moving novel

What an odd feeling, to have such a subdued book impact me in such a powerful way. There's still so much I don't understand, yet I feel like I just lived an emotionally exhausting week among the struggling yet strong Russian women of this novel.

Perhaps I'm so overwhelmed because the main character of Disappearing Earth was not a person, but rather an entire place and culture.

Kamchatka is a small remote peninsula in the Russian Far East, about the size of California and not far from Alaska. I suggest investigating the history of this rugged area and its native peoples before picking up this novel. A little understanding up front might help you appreciate how the disappearance of a couple young girls could so fully impact an entire tundra region.

As well, the construction of this book is unique and difficult to embrace if you're not expecting it. It offers a month-by-month view into the lives of different woman who live in Kamchatka. You are not supposed to find any connection between these women beyond where they live (not until the very end of the book, anyway). We see how each one survives everyday life, facing the savage weather, the bravado of the men, the racism against indigenous peoples by the mainland Russians who emigrated there, and the all-too-common financial struggles. It's a fascinating succession of short stories exposing the culture of this remote community, tied together by one event that rippled through and affected each of them in powerful ways.

I admit I don't know enough about the (pre-collapse) Soviet Union, but all the references to "before" that were made have me aching to find out more about the then and now of Russian culture. That's the kind of book I love most: one that makes me wonder and question, and inspires me to learn more.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Beautifully written

This was a great listen. Wonderful character development through vignettes of lives that intertwine while a mystery unfolds. My only criticism is I felt like I needed a chart to keep track of everyone and how they related to one another. Looking forward to listening to it again to connect all the dots.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

16 people found this helpful