Crossings: A Novel

Alex Landragin

Jul 2020 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Barrie Kreinik and Raphael Corkhill

About this audiobook

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 the author

ALEX LANDRAGIN is a French-Armenian-Australian writer. Now a freelance writer, he is a former author of Lonely Planet travel guides in Australia, Europe and Africa, and his writing has appeared in The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and is a past recipient of an Australia Council Emerging Writers Grant. Alex has lived many places, but currently resides in Melbourne, Australia.