The Compound Audiobook By Aisling Rawle cover art

The Compound

A Novel

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The Compound

By: Aisling Rawle
Narrated by: Lucy Boynton
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About this listen

Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. Winner takes all.

“Every bit as addictive as your favorite guilty pleasure binge-watch, but with all the substance of a literary classic.”—Oprah Daily

“I dare you not to tear through The Compound at lightning speed.”—Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Black Girl

ONE THE BOOKS OF THE SUMMER: The New York Times, Vulture, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Forbes, Betches, Publishers Weekly

Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.

Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?

Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.

©2025 Aisling Rawle (P)2025 Random House Audio
Dystopian Editors Select Genre Fiction Psychological Science Fiction
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Critic reviews

“A disorienting view of a world that doesn’t seem too far removed from how we are already living—trapped between the desire for connection and the impulse to only look out for ourselves.”—Vulture

“Every bit as addictive as your favorite guilty pleasure binge-watch, but with all the substance of a literary classic.”—Oprah Daily

The Compound is a blistering takedown of reality TV in our capitalist world, where the gamification of love and power is sold as entertainment.”—Michelle Min Sterling, New York Times bestselling author of Camp Zero

Editorial Review

An unputdownable listen to devour seaside
Fans of bingeable reality TV and speculative fiction alike will find themselves gripped by the premise of Aisling Rawle's debut. Our beautiful heroine Lily wakes inside "the compound"—the remote desert set of a blockbuster reality show—where she must compete against 18 other contestants to earn both prizes and the right to stay. Amidst the romance and machinations, there's also this mysterious, niggling sense that just maybe beyond the borders of their titular home, there's an apocalyptic event on the horizon. Beyond that unnerving mystery, the combustion engine at the heart of this stylish story is Rawle's nuanced understanding of the motivations at play when beautiful people rank themselves against one another. She renders them far more human and tangible than the show producers ever would. It was enough to make this listener wonder if the author herself had ever enjoyed a stint of temporary fame; but it's more likely that—as a secondary school teacher by trade—Rawle knows better than most the feeling of sharks swarming. —Emily C., Audible Editor

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