The Listeners

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE FINALIST

A propulsive literary page-turner about a family torn apart by a mother’s obsession with a sound that no one else can hear

One night, while lying in bed next to her husband, Claire Devon suddenly hears a low hum. This innocuous sound, which no one else in the house can hear, has no obvious source or medical cause, but it begins to upset the balance of Claire’s life. When she discovers that one of her students can also hear the hum, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of people who also perceive the sound. What starts out as a kind of neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something much more extreme, with far-reaching, devastating consequences. 

The Listeners is an electrifying novel that treads the thresholds of faith, conspiracy and mania. Compelling and exhilarating, it forces us to consider how strongly we hold on to what we perceive, and the way different views can tear a family apart.

JORDAN TANNAHILL is an internationally acclaimed playwright who was born in Ottawa and is currently based in London. Two of his plays have won a Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. He has written one previous novel, Liminal, which was published to much acclaim and named one of the best Canadian novels of 2018 by CBC Books. CBC Arts named him as “one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country’s history.” He is a regular columnist on CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter.