Beach
Alex Garland

Narrated By: Alfie Allen

Duration: 11 hours

What to expect

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Beach by Alex Garland, read by Alfie Allen.

The classic story of paradise found - and lost.

Richard lands in East Asia in search of an earthly utopia. In Thailand, he is given a map promising an unknown island, a secluded beach - and a new way of life. What Richard finds when he gets there is breathtaking: more extraordinary, more frightening than his wildest dreams.

But how long can paradise survive here on Earth? And what lengths will Richard go to in order to save it?

Genre

Modern & contemporary fiction

Listen to a sample

A gripping adventure, and a fascinating jigsaw

Winningly compulsive, brilliantly conceived

Garland has written a powerful and frighteningly believable novel

Lord of the Flies and The Magus lurk at the roots of this novel, but Garland reshapes them with panache into something terrifyingly new

An exceptional first novel...An action novel that provokes subtle responses, The Beach takes in ideas about man's inevitable progress from noble savage to social breakdown (and) the related tradition of nature versus art

A white-knuckle ride into the heart of darkness

A highly confident debut...this incisive novel may well come to be regarded as a defining text in the history of imaginative travel writing

Precise and speedy prose, with good old-fashioned romantic adventure spiced up with deadpan authorial irony

Fresh, fast-paced, compulsive and clever

Alex Garland is writing a brand new kind of adventure novel. His style is dangerously simple yet altogether captivating

Garland's prose is stunningly lucid. Addictive and compelling

A mesmerising, knuckle-clenching read