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Red Pill

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Red Pill

By: Hari Kunzru
Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
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About this listen

 ‘The book I wish I’d written? Whatever Hari Kunzru is publishing next’ Aravind Adiga

‘Astonishing, absorbing, terrifying. Immensely good.’ Philip Pullman

'‘Red Pill stands as a final blast of sanity against this new, deranged reality. It is a literary masterpiece for a barbaric new world rapidly running out of room for literary masterpieces.’ The Spectator

'[A] deeply intelligent and artfully constructed novel.' Financial Times

From the author of White Tears comes a breathtaking, state-of-the-world novel about one man’s struggle to defend his values and create a reality free from the shadows of the past.

‘From now on when you see something, you’re seeing it because I want you to see it.
When you think of something, it’ll be because I want you to think about it…’

And with those words, the obsession begins.

A writer has left his family in Brooklyn for a three month residency at the Deuter Centre in Berlin, hoping for undisturbed days devoted to artistic absorption.

When nothing goes according to plan, he finds himself holed up in his room watching Blue Lives, a violent cop show with a bleak and merciless worldview. One night at a party he meets Anton, the charismatic creator of the show, and strikes up a conversation.

It is a conversation that leads him on a journey into the heart of moral darkness. A conversation thatthreatens to destroy everything he holds most dear, including his own mind.

Red Pill is a novel about the alt-right, online culture, creativity, sanity and history. It tells the story of the 21st century through the prism of the centuries that preceded it, showing how the darkest chapters of our past haunt our present. More than anything, though, this is a novel about love and how it can endure in a world where everything else seems to have lost all meaning.


Praise for White Tears
‘Exquisitely attuned’ Washington Post
‘Electrifying, subversive and wildly original’ TheNew Yorker
'A book that everyone should be reading right now' TIME Magazine
‘Haunting, doom-drenched, genuinely and viscerally disturbing...’ The Independent Psychological Thriller & Suspense
All stars
Most relevant
I was sucked into the story yesterday, and listened to bits throughout today, today after listening to the segment about the GDR I was unable to stop listening untill now

An instant favorite

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Interesting book. I bought it after having it recommended by a friend. I was interested in the description and the exploration of the growth of the alt right in recent years. This aspect of the book actually ended up fascinating me much less than the author’s account of a person’s declining mental health. I found the descriptions, details and the impact realistic, compelling and ultimately quite sad.
The performance is interesting, it feels less like an audio book and more like a podcast interview (minus the interviewer). The narrative lends it a really personal perspective. The main character forced you to walk a line between irritation at him being irritatingly neurotic and overthinking the most simple of concepts and feelings of empathy as he unravels as a result of this.
I don’t think the book would necessarily be one I’d recommend to everyone but ultimately I really enjoyed it

Worth a read

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I liked the romantic form of writing and language. But was expecting a much more uplifting book than the dark insides of one man’s mind. Very realistic and unexpected.

Bit depressing

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Too much jibberish. I feel like I’m sure the author had some good ideas and intentions but it was executed very poorly

A lot of nothing

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somehow i was expecting a bit more from the book, i felt the plot was not captivating enough and made the message get lost. i both liked, and did not, the fact that the author does not reveal the clear connection of the story to his intention all the way to the end: like this, the plot felt partially to just run in a different direction too much, and it partially felt like a disconnect, but at the same time, it also felt like a mystery which you get to figure out at the end. a family man runs off to Germany to work on a book and find his motivation for life, only for the end to make me think the book was about something else more.
there were interesting remarks in the text, and i liked some of it, but i felt it was overall lacking.
it is possible that if i saw the book's main theme from the beginning to be immigration, the rights and comfort of being somehow foreign, and people's notions about what home is and should be, my opinion of it would be different, but the plot mashed it up a bit too much for me, and i was not sure that was the intent all the way until the end.

did not captivate

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