
Vera, or Faith
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Shannon Tyo
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Gary Shteyngart
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By:
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Gary Shteyngart
About this listen
A poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends
“A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever.”—Karen Russell
“Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful.”—Elif Batuman
“A brilliant fable about childhood, and so much more, in our broken country.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Bustle, Vulture, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, AV Club, Hey Alma
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."
©2025 Gary Shteyngart (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Shteyngart’s work is always saturated with humor and heart, and his latest novel offers a new perspective on one of literature’s most prominent subjects: How can a family survive in America? . . . Shteyngart is excellent at capturing the difficult places where emotional bonds grow thin even as love remains potent.”—Vulture
“Reliably entertaining and incisive.”—The Washington Post
“Through Vera’s eyes, Shteyngart creates a comic masterpiece that questions everything from politics to the way we adapt to change.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Story
On an ordinary summer morning, the world is changed by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that seemingly lead to another world. People are, of course, mesmerized and intrigued: A new dimension filled with beauty and resources beckons them to step into an adventure. But, perhaps inevitably, people soon learn that what looks like paradise may very well be filled with danger.
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I really wanted to like this book but its just not as deep as it thinks it is
- By chris allmon on 06-09-25
By: Megan Giddings
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Super Sad True Love Story
- A Novel
- By: Gary Shteyngart
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Adam Grupper
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, creates a compelling reality in this tale about an illiterate America in the not-too-distant future. Lenny Abramov may just be penning the world’s last diary. Which is good, because while falling in love with a rather unpleasant woman and witnessing the fall of a great empire, Lenny has a lot to write about.
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Dystopia Now
- By Ryan on 09-19-10
By: Gary Shteyngart
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In Pursuit of Beauty
- A Novel
- By: Gary Baum
- Narrated by: Evan Sibley, Nikki Massoud
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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What would you endure to fulfill your dreams? What would you do to have the perfect body? For Dr. Roya Delshad, the answers are anything and everything. A sought-after Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Roya is also the highest example of her craft. She’s had every inch of her own body sculpted, one procedure at a time. All to escape a painful and lonely past. But when Roya gives the gift of beauty to those who can’t afford the cost, the media labels her “the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive,” and she soon finds herself pleading her case from inside a prison cell.
By: Gary Baum
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The Homemade God
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Rachel Joyce, Sarah Winman
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family’s lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece. Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting. As the siblings try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a state of lawlessness: living under the same roof for the first time in decades, forced to confront the buried wounds they incurred as his children, and waiting for answers.
By: Rachel Joyce
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Our Last Resort
- A Novel
- By: Clémence Michallon
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Frida and Gabriel arrive seeking a fresh start at the stunning Ara Hotel in the secluded desert of Escalante, Utah. Once so close they were able to finish each other’s sentences, they’ve grown apart in recent years after a sudden, unspeakable tragedy. Now, at the luxe resort, they are ready to reconnect between dips in the pool and hikes on spectacular desert trails. It all feels like paradise—until the dead body of a beautiful young woman who was vacationing at the Ara with her powerful, much older husband is discovered.
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Great sophomore novel
- By PoshPetCare LLC on 07-08-25
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Our Country Friends
- A Novel
- By: Gary Shteyngart
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist, his Russian-born psychiatrist wife, their precocious child obsessed with K-pop, a struggling Indian American writer, a wildly successful Korean American app developer, a global dandy with three passports.
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Beautifully written, painful, but very, very moving
- By Jim on 11-08-21
By: Gary Shteyngart
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I'll Be Right Here
- A Novel
- By: Amy Bloom
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, young Gazala becomes friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s lost, beloved brother, Samir, joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome makes their way into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family.
By: Amy Bloom
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If You Love It, Let It Kill You
- A Novel
- By: Hannah Pittard
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P. has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the university, living with her boyfriend, a fellow academic, and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister’s sprawling family lives just across the street, and their long-divorced, deeply complicated parents have also recently moved to town. One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently—and soon—in her ex-husband’s debut novel.
By: Hannah Pittard
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Angel Down
- By: Daniel Kraus
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade. What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire.
By: Daniel Kraus
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Mendell Station
- By: J.B. Hwang
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s January 2020, and Miriam is already getting a sense that the world might be ending. First, she learns that her best friend, Esther, has died. Then her faith in God—in everything, really—follows suit. Her job teaching Scripture at a private Christian school suddenly seems untenable, so she quits. Thankfully, the postal service is hiring. While Miriam finds comfort in her route, the mail truck can hardly outpace the memory of her lost friend and eroded faith.
By: J.B. Hwang
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Love Forms
- A Novel
- By: Claire Adam
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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For much of her life, Dawn has felt as if something had been missing. Now, at the age of fifty-eight, with a divorce behind her and her two grown-up sons busy with their own lives, she should be trying to settle into a new future for herself. But she keeps returning to the past and to the secret she’s kept all these years. At just sixteen, Dawn found herself pregnant, and—as was common in Trinidad back then—her parents sent her away to have the baby and give her up for adoption.
By: Claire Adam