
To Name the Bigger Lie
A Memoir in Two Stories
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 $18.74
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Natalie Naudus
-
By:
-
Sarah Viren
“Has the page-turning quality of a thriller.” —NPR
“Strange and wonderful…A book for our times.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Propulsive…mesmerizing…breathtaking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This unforgettable memoir traces the ramifications of a series of lies that threaten to derail the author’s life—exploring the line between fact and fiction, reality and conspiracy.
In To Name the Bigger Lie, Sarah Viren “has pulled off a magic trick of fantastic proportion” (The Washington Post), telling the story of an all-too-real investigation into her personal and professional life that she expands into a profound exploration of the nature of truth. The memoir begins as Viren is researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—eventually, even the reality of historical atrocities. As she digs into the effects of his teachings, her life takes a turn into the fantastical when her wife, Marta, is notified that she’s being investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach.
To Name the Bigger Lie follows the investigation as it challenges everything Sarah thought she knew about truth, testimony, and the difference between the two. She knows the claims made against Marta must be lies, and as she attempts to uncover the identity of the person behind them and prove her wife’s innocence, she’s drawn back into the questions that her teacher inspired all those years ago: about the nature of truth, the value of skepticism, and the stakes we all have in getting the story right.
An incisive journey into honesty and betrayal, this memoir explores the powerful pull of dangerous conspiracy theories and the pliability of personal narratives in a world dominated by hoaxes and fakes. An “ouroboros of a book” (The New York Times) and a “bold new approach to the genre of memoir” (The Millions), To Name the Bigger Lie also unfolds like the best of psychological thrillers—made all the more riveting because it’s true.
Listeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...


Love this
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I felt like I was there
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
However, Ms. Viren's efforts to figure out how combine these two tales into one fell flat for me. It was never clear to me where the segments about her teacher and her high school were going, or why she looked her classmates up decades later. The second half of the book worked much better then the first, and the narrator did a fine job, but ultimately I gave up on this book.
I wanted to love this book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very good read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
So complex
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the questions at the heart of this book…
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It started great and then…
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A must read! a definite page turner for me!
The lengths a human is willing to go to cover up their own hole! Unbelieveable!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Building to nothing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The This American Life story was better than the book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.