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The Listeners

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What to expect

Now a major BBC drama starring Rebecca Hall

‘Starts as a little hum in your ears, ends up blowing the top off your head’ EMMA DONOGHUE

‘A page-turning unravelling of a family’ ZOE WHITTALL

'Fans of The Power will love this addictive novel’ Stylist

A stunning, propulsive novel following one woman as she treads the fine lines between faith, conspiracy and mania.

While lying in bed next to her husband one night, Claire Devon hears a low hum that he cannot detect. And, it seems, no one else can either. This innocuous noise begins causing Claire headaches, nosebleeds, insomnia, gradually upsetting the balance of her life, though no obvious source or medical cause can be found.

When Claire discovers that a student of hers can also hear the hum, she and the boy strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of neighbours who can also pick up the sound. What starts as a neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something far more extreme and with far-reaching, devastating consequences for all of them.

The Listeners is a gripping, exhilarating novel exploring the seductive pull of the unknown, the rise of online conspiracy culture and the desire for community and connection in our increasingly polarised times.

‘One of those rare novels that entered my soul … Tannahill writes with the heat and wisdom of a god’ CLAUDIA DEY, author of Heartbreaker

‘Fantastic on conspiracy theories, cults, faith and mania’ Daily Mail

‘Breathtakingly, breath-holdingly good’ IAN WILLIAMS, author of Reproduction

Critics Review

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Praise for The Listeners:

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‘Fantastic on conspiracy theories, cults, faith and mania and stuffed full of engaging characters’ Daily Mail

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‘The Listeners starts as a little hum in your ear and ends up blowing the top off your head. A deeply plausible, funny, horrifying story of a journey right off the rails’ Emma Donoghue, author of The Pull of the Stars

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‘I loved this book. Tannahill is such a skilled prose stylist that this book manages to be both a page-turning unravelling of a family and a manic, fully-alive monologue of a woman going over the edge’ Zoe Whittall, author of The Spectacular

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‘One of those rare novels that entered my soul, rearranged my brain cells and then my world view. Tannahill writes with the
heat and wisdom of a God’ Claudia Dey, author of Heartbreaker and Stunt

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‘Breathtakingly timely. It’s an enigmatic story of 21st-century melancholia motored by sentences at once propulsive and erudite (that beautiful synthesis). Everyone’s going to be talking about this book’ Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A History of My Brief Body

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‘Tannahill has written an engaging, shocking and hilarious story about how a woman's search for deeper meaning leads to an entire town being in crisis. It is a testament to the revulsion and horror an ordinary person can inspire when they decide to simply peek outside of the box’ Heather O’Neill, author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel

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‘A breathtakingly, breathholdingly good novel from one of the most original writers in this country. Tannahill serves up enormous ideas in delicious slices. What’s truth? Who do we trust? Is skepticism better than belief? He has a playwright’s ear and a director’s eye. I didn’t so much read the novel as watch it unfold’ Ian Williams, author of Reproduction

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