Leave the World Behind: A Novel
Kindle
$12.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$8.98
Paperback
$10.60
Audible Logo Your audiobook is waiting!
Enjoy a free trial on us
$0.00
  • Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
  • One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
  • You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
  • $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
Learn more about membership
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
List Price: $19.79
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

Leave the World Behind: A Novel Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Rumaan Alam (Author), Marin Ireland (Narrator), HarperAudio (Publisher)
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 19,201 ratings
Editors' pick Best Literature & Fiction
See all formats and editions

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award (Fiction)

A Best Book of the Year From: The Washington Post * Time * NPR * Elle * Esquire * Kirkus * Library Journal * The Chicago Public Library * The New York Public Library * BookPage * The Globe and Mail * EW.com * The LA Times * USA Today * InStyle * The New Yorker * AARP * Publisher's Lunch * LitHub * Book Marks * Electric Literature * Brooklyn Based * The Boston Globe

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.

From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.

Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?

Previous page
  1. Listening Length
    7 hours and 26 minutes
  2. Author
    Rumaan Alam
  3. Narrator
    Marin Ireland
  4. Audible release date
    October 6, 2020
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    HarperAudio
  7. ASIN
    B083Y64H85
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
Next page

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible audiobook with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $12.99 after you buy the Kindle book.

Product details

Listening Length 7 hours and 26 minutes
Author Rumaan Alam
Narrator Marin Ireland
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date October 06, 2020
Publisher HarperAudio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B083Y64H85
Best Sellers Rank #10,504 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#331 in Family Life Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
#506 in Literary Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
#567 in Women's Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
3.6 out of 5
19,201 global ratings
OVERLY PERVERSE in just four chapters & I wish I could return it. The writing is awful.
1 Star
OVERLY PERVERSE in just four chapters & I wish I could return it. The writing is awful.
Where do I begin? I had such high hopes for this but after four chapters I couldn’t do it anymore. The husband is sexist, the kids are portrayed ungrateful since infants. Also talks about the male genitalia way too much and how he’s expecting to be rough with the wife later. Also the wording is pretentious and when the wife went to the store every sentence started with “she bought”. This was done repeatedly. After the first five times a sentence started out that way I was face palming. I’ve never not finished a book but screw this pathetic attempt of a novel.
Hide
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Sorry we couldn't load the review

Top reviews from the United States

Ruth Schleifer
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful read!!! Recommend highly.
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2020
Verified Purchase
Bravo!!! Finally a novel that speaks to the human condition in post modern life, and profound delusions most of us use to build our precarious sense of normal. There is no normal. Especially now, and more importantly here.
We have not had a normal. Normal has eluded us for so long, we are forced to reconstruct it, using the flimsiest of materials.
But more importantly, we have lost the ability to appreciate just how abnormal things are.
The prototypical family of four head out of the City in the oppressive month of August, off to their pedestrian vacation in a remote Airbnb. The gradual erosion of cell service, and finally loss of all service on any device, cuts a stark relief of what any of us think is a “normal” day.
Very soon, the owners of the Airbnb arrive unannounced, deeply shaken about a massive blackout in the City. But it’s far more than a “regular” blackout. Something has happened for which they don’t yet have words.
Stunned by the loss of WiFi, and no way to learn what’s happened, the characters break into two camps. The first is to frantically try to maintain some sense of normalcy by cooking food and washing laundry, breaking out the alcohol, and waiting for “news” to come. But it will not come.
The second camp decides to go forth, and explore what is actually happening. To simply observe, without bias, what is happening outside of the secure fortress of the Airbnb. Because, as the author so gently points out, the natural world isn’t subject to the brainwashing we perpetrate on ourselves. Animals just know. Although the movement of animals in the setting of looming tsunamis isn’t spelled out, it doesn’t need to be. The reader is shown the images of nature responding to the unimaginable.

Those reading will likely fall into two groups. The first is those expecting some “conclusion” to the crisis at hand. “Some answers, dammit!! What the hell is going on here?!?!” These readers will likely be disappointed. The second group will see how meticulously the author leads us along, through a detached omniscient speaker, who points out widespread destruction in what was never a “normal” life.
The reader is gifted with bursts of cold, clinical clairvoyance. Yet these glimpses are completely incomplete. The reader will not be able to grasp the golden ring of full knowledge. The merry go round is no longer relevant.
The prose is lovely. The plot is both sinister and very mundane. The bursts of nature’s responses are as fantastical as any of the magical lines from the group of famous South American authors.

I couldn’t put this book down. Recommend highly.
81 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Lionel S. Taylor
4.0 out of 5 stars You Will Either Love It Or Hate It.
Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book seems to garner strong opinions in the reviews, and after reading it, I can see why. The opening is very simple: a family rents an isolated house out on Long Island for a vacation. Shortly after their arrival, the owners of the house show up with the news that something has happened, but it is not clear what that something was, and there is not an easy way to find out since all modern forms of communication have are not working. Now at this point, there are many directions this story could go in. I cannot count how many horror/thrillers I have seen start out with a similar premise. But the author takes the story in a different direction, and I believe this is the source of many diverging opinions.
Rather than take the story in the familiar directions that we have seen similar tales go, the author chooses to focus on the most mundane things of the family's visit. The first part of their vacation and the people involved's inner thoughts. In fact, the story has a very Closter phobic feel to it where the characters seem just as trapped in their own thoughts and emotions as they do by the events unfolding around them. The anxiety of interacting with strangers on an intimate level comes off as just as bad as whatever it is that is going on in the outside world, and I believe that is what the title implies. The disjointed feel to the narrative as it jumps from person to person adds to the feeling of confusion and disruption that is contrasted with what is conveyed in the characters' conversations. ( Something we have all done saying one thing while thinking another.) As events unfold very slowly ( most of the book takes place within a 48-hour time span), I could not help but wonder how I would behave in such a scary and disorienting situation and how my behavior would change if there were strangers there to witness it. This is played out as the characters swing between overconfident speculation, hedonistic denial, and confused dread as events unfold. Simultaneously, the reader is provided with information that highlights the situation's seriousness without really explaining what the situation is. This is both these books' greatest strength and weakness.
Like most people, I am used to having stories be wrapped up in a clear conclusion at the end, where all is revealed, and the protagonists have a clear path forward to the future. But too often, this type of ending seems lazy and simplistic. This book avoids doing this with its ending and the style in which it is written. While looking for some clear answers and a reassuring conclusion, I do not believe that was the author's goal. This book is more a study of human emotions and interactions. How we perceive others and how they perceive themselves and how we present ourselves to the world and look at from that perspective accomplishes its goal. If you are looking for a neat survival story that hits all of the familiar marks, you will be sorely disappointed. If you are looking for a story about human interactions and the contrast of how we present ourselves to the world as opposed to our inner thoughts, you will like this book. I liked this book.
132 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Sweetbooks
3.0 out of 5 stars Did I need to know that?
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2024
Verified Purchase
There's no doubt, Rumaan Alam has a way with words. There are some sentences in this novel that are just beautifully constructed. I loved the premise of the plot. The characters were decently developed in a short amount of time. Short quick moving chapters.

What bothered me was input of too much detail at times. Did I need to know the pasta was Barilla? Every single item in her grocery list? The name dropping felt like product placement. The bodily descriptions and masturbation detail was just too much as well. Even creepy. Those details were unnecessary to the plot.

In contrast to the film, I'd say the film script had some more favorable aspects to it. Danny (a cameo role played by Kevin Bacon) was better developed in the film with one of the greatest dialogue lines of the film, but in the book I was left unfulfilled. Making the wife the daughter in the film was a silly idea, so the book was better in that regard. The book also showed a lot more at the end, though I don't really know how I felt about both endings.

The theme is there. Appreciate what we have, while we have it, and remember that it could all change over night. Delivery was messy at times though.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Mejor la pelicula
Reviewed in Mexico on March 31, 2024
Verified Purchase
No me gustó y dejé el libro a medio leer
Report
PATRICK KELLY
5.0 out of 5 stars Saw the movie first
Reviewed in Canada on January 8, 2024
Verified Purchase
Read the book but the movie is different in a good way. Saw the movie three times. It takes a new perspective on war
One person found this helpful
 Report
Mike R
5.0 out of 5 stars Unsettling read in these dangerous times
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2024
Verified Purchase
Pager turner.
Brilliant contrast between the mundanity of everyday life, prejudices, family relationships and the unknowable (and unknown) horror of global conflict.
Report
Paul@Aude_France
5.0 out of 5 stars Scary
Reviewed in France on February 10, 2024
Verified Purchase
A very intense novel that should be read within as short a time as possible to keep the tension going. Throughout the book, the author builds a feeling of menace which at first the reader might believe is just in the characters' imaginations but which gradually becomes real.

This is also a book about being a parent, especially a father as the fathers in the story struggle with helplessness and despair. Not to mention their own fear.

Very much recommended.
Report
Carolina
5.0 out of 5 stars etwas zu detailliert, aber spannend
Reviewed in Germany on January 22, 2024
Verified Purchase
Ich habe das Buch noch nicht fertig, aber die Spannung lässt mich weiter.
Lieferung was schnell und das Buch war gut verpackt
Report