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The Shadow of the Object
- Author
- Chloe Aridjis
- Narrator
- Emer Kenny
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 16 April 2026
- Run Time
- 4 hours 34 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
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What to expect
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026**
A magnificent work of shadow-play and a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and mortality.
Flora is visiting home in Mexico when the family dog leaps up and bites her hand. She winds up in hospital where she undergoes several surgeries under anaesthesia and meets Wilhelmina, an elderly German woman with pneumonia, who collects pre-cinema toys and instruments. The two of them embark on a series of dream-like conversations in the hospital corridors. Wilhelmina puts on a magic lantern show for Flora, leaving her spellbound.
When things take an unexpected turn, Flora finds herself entrusted with an important mission. She returns to London, where she resumes her job polishing silver at a jewellery shop, and strikes up a strange friendship with Wilhelmina’s son, Max. As Flora dips in and out of her imagination, she is increasingly aware it’s not only the magic lantern that projects, and her perception of reality is subtly altered.
'One of our boldest writers' Deborah Levy
‘One of the most brilliant novelists working in English today’ Garth Greenwell
‘The politics of her prose is existential rather than anecdotal, as it was with Kafka’s’ Zadie Smith
‘A subtle and courageous writer’ Ali Smith
‘Chloe Aridjis is crafting a poetics of the strange’ TLS
© Chloe Aridjis 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
Critics Review
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'We were charmed by the novel’s meditation on friendship and grief, and its suggestion that the most meaningful truths can be found in the shadows.'
Booker Prize Judges 2026
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'Chloe Aridjis is a revolutionary who is quietly changing the whole novel form. She is mining the richest seam in the vast field of fiction and coming up with gold. Her radiantly lyrical and intelligent writing is thrilling to read.'
Neel Mukherjee
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'Clandestine, compassionate, and ever so slightly off-kilter, Chloe Aridjis's magnificent sleight of hand reshuffles the novel and places before us a beautiful and mischievous magic lantern of a book that casts out a multitude of unforgettable scenes, while shining a steady granular light on the hidden depths of the human psyche.'
Claire-Louise Bennett
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'The Shadow of the Object would be an immense achievement based on the strange, impressionistic beauty of its prose alone... [a] glowing, mythopoeic book... I can only concur with Aridjis’s many admirers that she is one of the boldest writers at work in English today.'
AK Blakemore, the Guardian
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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'In the world The Shadow of the Object brings to light – now sharply focused, now only uncertainly defined – Chloe Aridjis patiently layers signs and symbols into a resonant network. A beautiful, eerie, grief-haunted novel.'
Chris Power
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'With The Shadow of the Object Aridjis cements her status as the laureate of the peripatetic — of all that’s serendipitous, strange, improbable and, for these very reasons, true.'
Tom McCarthy
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'There is a keen intelligence and an eerie sensuality to everything that Chloe Aridjis writes. Reading The Shadow of the Object is a little like entering a dream state. A subtly addictive and intensely atmospheric experience. You won’t want to wake up.'
Rupert Thomson
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'Lucid and fabulous, and it bites.'
Daisy Hildyard
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'A wildly brilliant and beautifully crafted novel. By turns mesmerising, magical, elegiac and funny, it's utterly compelling, original and surprising. I devoured it.'
Jennifer Higgie
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[An] enchanting new novel… Aridjis never allows her narrative to become surreal, but revels in the ‘marvellous real’. She creates a world full of wonder without indulging in the impossible
Literary Review
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
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5.0 5.0
This is a fascinating and strange story. Aridjis's writing is spare and precise with a thoughtful tracing of ideas and impressions. The novel also offers a touch of the uncanny around the edges, all of which feel very true to life as it is lived. I absolutely loved it. I am so glad that it has been included on the 2026 Booker Prize longlist.
The narration is perfect!TippyCanoeGal 2026-07-29
Details
- Author
- Chloe Aridjis
- Narrator
- Emer Kenny
- Duration
- 4 hours 34 minutes
- Release Date
- 16 April 2026
- ISBN
- 9781529992120
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Speculative fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026**A magnificent work of shadow-play and a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and mortality.Flora is visiting home in Mexico when the family dog leaps up and bites her hand. She winds up in hospital where she undergoes several surgeries under anaesthesia and meets Wilhelmina, an elderly German woman with pneumonia, who collects pre-cinema toys and instruments. The two of them embark on a series of dream-like conversations in the hospital corridors. Wilhelmina puts on a magic lantern show for Flora, leaving her spellbound.When things take an unexpected turn, Flora finds herself entrusted with an important mission. She returns to London, where she resumes her job polishing silver at a jewellery shop, and strikes up a strange friendship with Wilhelmina’s son, Max. As Flora dips in and out of her imagination, she is increasingly aware it’s not only the magic lantern that projects, and her perception of reality is subtly altered.'One of our boldest writers' Deborah Levy‘One of the most brilliant novelists working in English today’ Garth Greenwell‘The politics of her prose is existential rather than anecdotal, as it was with Kafka’s’ Zadie Smith‘A subtle and courageous writer’ Ali Smith‘Chloe Aridjis is crafting a poetics of the strange’ TLS© Chloe Aridjis 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
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