The Listeners

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

© 2021 Fourth Estate (Audiobook): 9780008445423

Release date

Audiobook: 8 July 2021