
The Antidote
A Novel
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By:
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Karen Russell
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from Lit Hub, Marie Claire, TIME, Vulture, Esquire, People, The Chicago Review of Books, and BookPage
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. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging listeners with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
©2025 Karen Russell (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"In The Antidote, Karen Russell writes indelible characters who keep choosing messy community over silo’d righteousness, motion over despair. She presents for inspection America’s most persistent chorus of moral self-defense, “Better them than us,” and shows how it rots the minds, hearts, and land of all who sing it. Only Karen Russell could write a dust bowl opus with such raucous brio—The Antidote soars with exigent joy and laugh-out-loud scenes, with memory witches and enchanted cameras and the world’s most lovable sentient scarecrow. It’s magic, a book doing this big work and also making it propulsive, eminently readable. Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude."—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
“Karen Russell runs her imaginative strings across dark caverns of our history so those spaces can sound their own songs. The Antidote lets us see the perils and possibilities of storytelling, illuminating its powers to erase, discover, reconstruct, prop up, terrorize, delight, and collapse. Russell is truly one of the greatest writers of our time. And then also: every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery.”—Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
“The Antidote is an achingly gorgeous book about dust, memory, basketball, murder, yearning, photography, and the way the land holds both the memory of what went before and the dreams of what may come. Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange.”—Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
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Story
On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.
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No flow, no plot
- By KSCAR70 on 05-25-25
By: Alice Austen
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The Jackal's Mistress
- A Novel
- By: Chris Bohjalian
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Chris Bohjalian
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
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Just ok
- By Gwen on 03-20-25
By: Chris Bohjalian
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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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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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The next parable of the sower
- By Jess on 03-18-25
By: Laila Lalami
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St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
- Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Ariel Sitrick, Zach McLarty, Patrick Mackie, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the collection's title story, a pack of girls raised by wolves are painstakingly reeducated by nuns. In "Haunting Olivia", two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab. In "Sleepaway Camp for Disordered Dreamers", a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to a summer camp for troubled sleepers (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Sleep Apneics; Cabin 3, Somnambulists . . . ).
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Killed by casting
- By Zane on 03-03-11
By: Karen Russell
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The Paris Express
- By: Emma Donoghue
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.
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Outstanding narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 03-19-25
By: Emma Donoghue
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Tilt
- A Novel
- By: Emma Pattee
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
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Over enthusiastic, snarky narrator who can't...
- By NMwritergal on 03-27-25
By: Emma Pattee
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Wild Dark Shore
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte McConaghy
- Narrated by: Cooper Mortlock, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
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Please speak up!
- By Sarah on 03-12-25
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One Good Thing
- A Novel
- By: Georgia Hunter
- Narrated by: Eva Feiler, Georgia Hunter
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
1940, Italy. Lili and Esti have been best friends since they first met at university. When Esti’s son Theo is born, they become as close as sisters. While a war seethes across borders, life somehow goes on—until Germany invades Italy, and the friends suddenly find themselves in occupied territory. Esti, older and fiercely self-assured, convinces Lili to join the resistance efforts. But when disaster strikes, a critically wounded Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: To go on the run with Theo. Protect him while Esti can’t.
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I loved it
- By helene vanderhoff on 04-28-25
By: Georgia Hunter
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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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Story
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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Dream Count
- A Novel
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sandra Okuboyejo, A'rese Emokpae, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship.
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A slow burn
- By Cheryl on 05-25-25
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Stag Dance
- A Novel & Stories
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio, Briggon Snow, Eileen Noonan, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.
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Cringy and Beautiful
- By Stella G. Schwartz on 04-23-25
By: Torrey Peters
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Theft
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Ashley Zhangazha
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.
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Bader
- By Paul on 03-21-25
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Red Dog Farm
- A Novel
- By: Nathaniel Ian Miller
- Narrated by: Olafur Darri Olafsson
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík.
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So much animal death.
- By S. Nolte on 03-05-25
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Sleep Donation
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Hundreds of thousands of people have totally lost the ability to sleep. Run by the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers, the Slumber Corps is at the forefront of the fight against this deadly new disease. But when Trish is confronted by "Baby A", the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y", whose horrific, infectious nightmares are threatening to sweep through the precious sleep supply, her faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter.
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Disappointing and incoherent
- By Albigensian on 08-13-22
By: Karen Russell
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Luminous
- By: Silvia Park
- Narrated by: Eric Yang
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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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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Brilliant writing, mesmerizing story!
- By jc on 03-14-25
By: Silvia Park
Excellent
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It comes together powerfully in the end and has plenty of exciting twists along the way to keep you enticed. My only concerns were some unfinished storylines with Harp and Etna, the deputy, Del and Valeria, as well as the awkwardness of The prairie witch apparently talking to her son in diary form which was confusing at times and felt disjointed.
Nonetheless it is a masterful work of art that speaks critically to so many truths our modern American culture needs to hear.
A Panoply of Justice issues woven into a creative story
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Superb, multi-layered story with a talented cast of narrators
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Karen Russell writes books like Nobody’s business. Period.
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Annoying irritating performance
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Ambitious book and great storytelling
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the dustbowl
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Evocative and beautifully crafted
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A wonderful fictional magical novel set in the historically accurate Dust Bowl.
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powerful women surviving, and thriving under difficult circumstances
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