Crossings
A Novel

Name: Crossings
Brand: Macmillan Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Alex Landragin
ISBN: 9781250753151

Author: Alex Landragin

Narrator: Barrie Kreinik, Raphael Corkhill

Unabridged: 24 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Published: 07/28/2020

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fantasy

Synopsis

Alex Landragin's Crossings is an unforgettable and explosive genre-bending debut—a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes.

*To listen to this novel straight through, just play the program from the beginning. To listen to the Baroness Sequence, start with Download Part 2 at 12 hours, 21 minutes.*

On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be listened to one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence.

The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations.

With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

"A high-concept speculative adventure novel executed with intelligence and grace, Australian writer Landragin’s debut contains a story within a story within a story. Crossings is an invigorating puzzle of a book that reads like a complete, intricate work of genre-defying fiction rather than just a cool gimmick." -- Vulture

"A sparkling debut. Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling." —Publishers Weekly

"Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries in an impressive debut novel." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

About Alex Landragin

ALEX LANDRAGIN is a French-Armenian-Australian writer. Currently based in Melbourne, Australia, he has also resided in Paris, Marseille, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Charlottesville. He has previously worked as a librarian, an indigenous community worker and an author of Lonely Planet travel guides in Australia, Europe and Africa. Alex holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and occasionally performs early jazz piano under the moniker Tenderloin Stomp.

About Raphael Corkhill

Raphael Corkhill is an award-winning stage, screen and voice actor. Born and raised in the UK, Raphael graduated from Princeton University then gained his MFA in acting from the University of Southern California. Raphael’s film and television credits include the Warner Bros. feature The Goldfinch, independent TV pilot Manny, and Burning at Both Ends alongside Cary Elwes. His extensive voice credits include billion-dollar video game franchises: Uncharted 4 (BAFTA “Best Game” winner), The Elder Scrolls Online and Titanfall 2, as well as the recent blockbuster ESO: Morrowind. Raphael has narrated numerous titles for Macmillan including The Fallon Trilogy and his audiobook performances have been described by Publisher’s Weekly as “terrific.”

Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on July 28, 2020

NOW AVAILABLE!!! once upon a time, i read Hopscotch, cortazar’s fan-favoritiest novel, and i did it aaaaalllll wrong. i misunderstood the rules and thought i was supposed to read the whole novel like a regular book and then go back and reread it using the page-order laid out in the “Table of Instruct......more

Goodreads review by Valentina on August 30, 2021

Immaginate di essere un rilegatore con una bottega e una famiglia da mantenere. Immaginate di ricevere l'accorata richiesta di una vostra ricca amica bibliofila: rilegare tre racconti composti da tre mani diverse, uniti da un filo sottile, invisibile a chiunque se non alla mecenate stessa. Immaginate......more

Goodreads review by Dez the Bookworm on March 13, 2023

What can I say, I have a thing for choosing books by their front cover and notable descriptors of what’s inside. A fun little gamble when I’m not sure what next to try… I’m glad I liked the cover, because this book was a delightful surprise. I loved the three storylines (although I wasn’t sure I woul......more

Goodreads review by Krystal on July 16, 2020

I am more confused than impressed. And this is an impressive novel. The scope is massive and the ambition is there, and the stories weave through generations and tell a rather epic tale. Yet it feels unfinished to me. The idea: A technique known as Crossing allows a person to transfer their soul into a......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on March 17, 2023

Crossings is a cleverly-constructed historical epic, spanning the 18th, 19th, 20th and (in the prologue) 21st centuries and settings encompassing Western Europe, North America and the South Pacific. My first reading was in the conventional sequence (i.e. starting at page 1 and reading straight to th......more

Quotes

August 2020 Indie Next Pick!

"A sparkling debut. Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling." —Publishers Weekly

"Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries in an impressive debut novel. Landragin layers historical fiction, metafiction, mystery, fantasy, myth, and romance in a way that might remind readers of such books as Cloud Atlas, Life After Life, The Time Traveler’s Wife—or even Dan Brown’s conspiracy-based adventures, albeit with more elegant prose Landragin carries off the whole handsomely written enterprise with panache." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

"This novel is outstanding for its sheer inventiveness. The alternative ordering of chapters creates a tension that heightens the awareness of the interlocking aspects of time and space, while deft writing seduces the reader in a complex tale of pursuit, denial, and retribution moving from past to future. Highly recommended." —Library Journal (Starred)

"A high-concept speculative adventure novel executed with intelligence and grace...an invigorating puzzle of a book that reads like a complete, intricate work of genre-defying fiction."
—Vulture

"An exquisite novel. My initial melancholy rage at not having written it myself swiftly transformed into blissful gratitude that it exists at all, and that I am lucky enough to read it. Sure to be one of the biggest literary events of the year."
—Sam J. Miller, Nebula Award Winning author of Blackfish City

"This delightful puzzle box of a novel is full of clever structural tricks that echo works by Nabokov and Cortazar, but Crossings goes beyond postmodern gamesmanship and finds real heart and soul in its compelling characters and old-fashioned storytelling ethos. Alex Landrigan has given us a deeply satisfying read!"
—Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will

"Crossings is at once a romance, a puzzle box, and a supernatural mystery that spans not only the globe but also the centuries. Landragin has crafted a richly imaginative novel sure to appeal to fans of Cloud Atlas and Possession."
—Tom Sweterlitsch, award-winning author of The Gone World

“Crossings is playful, obsessive, romantic, intelligent, and wholly absorbing, with fascinations enough for a whole shelf of novels. I followed its alternate sequence rather than its conventional one, and reading it I had the unusual—for me maybe even unprecedented—sense, no matter where I was in the page count, that I was always occupying its exact center. Like its characters, I was never sure how close I was to the beginning of the story, how close to the end, which gave it an aura of inexhaustibility. It's a book that feels not endless but endlessly replenishable."
—Kevin Brockmeier, New York Times Bestselling author

“Alex Landragin works a vast magician’s kit of erudite invention and heart in this enchanting debut. Crossings is a novel to savor and re-read."
-Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned