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Real Life: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Young Lions Award, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award “A blistering coming of age story” —O: The Oprah Magazine Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, Vice, Self, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice. Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.
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Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
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Finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize
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A Washington Post Best Book of 2020
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A London Guardian Best Book of the Year
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An Elle Magazine Pick of 2020's Best Books
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A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
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A Harper’s Bazaar Pick of Best Books of 2020
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A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
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A Vanity Fair Magazine Pick of Best Books of the Year
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An NPR Best Book of the Year
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A Paris Review Selection of Top Books of the Year
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A BBC’s Best Books of the Year Selection
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Among shortlisted titles for Booker Prize, 2020
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Among longlisted titles for Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, 2020
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Among shortlisted titles for Lambda Literary Award, 2021
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Among shortlisted titles for National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, 2020
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Among shortlisted titles for VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize, 2021
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Among shortlisted titles for Young Lions Award, 2021
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About Brandon Taylor
Brandon Taylor is the author of the acclaimed novel The Late Americans and of Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals was awarded the Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He tweets at @blgtylr, where he has 90k followers, and his newsletter can be found at: blgtylr.substack.com.
About Kevin R. Free
Kevin R. Free is an audiobook narrator and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and several AudioFile best narrations of the year selections. Known for his work with young-adult novels, he has read titles by Rick Riordan, Walter Dean Myers, and Joe Haldeman. In 2011 he was named a Best Voice in Young Adult and Fantasy from AudioFile magazine for his narration of Myers’ The Cruisers: Checkmate.