Audio only
The First House - from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Burnt Sugar
By Avni DoshiNarrated by Avni DoshiLength6h 27m
About this audiobook
'Tender and cynical, poised between unknowing and knowing, The First House juxtaposes myths, rituals and its protagonist's life experience to probe the tragic interplay of marriage, betrayal and sacrifice in her life.' - Geetanjali Shree, International Booker Prize-winning author of Tomb of Sand
'The end days of a marriage are the beginning of a new life. In this story of rebirth, each page is sharp, piercing and totally defiant of the expected. I loved how bracing, unsentimental and beautifully written it is.'- Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain
'Bare. Raw. Healing. The First House is a book that rips through all the layers with such honesty and precision, you're left naked, with nowhere to hide.'- Shubhangi Swarup, author of Latitudes of Longing
'I married my husband to live in a fairy tale ... We would be like planets orbiting the sun or gods enacting their myths. Marriage was a solution, and I wanted to be dissolved.'
A woman's husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage - or so she believed. In the days that follow, marooned with two young daughters in a suburb that has never quite felt like home, she begins coming apart.
As she sifts through the ruins of the life she had shared with her husband, she begins to notice the warning signs she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into the forest of her own mind, where marital memories intermingle with myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses, messages hidden in the constellations and altars stained with blood. Over the course of a single summer, as two broods of cicadas prepare to emerge at once and fill the air with a plague of ecstatic transformation, she too is splitting, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae towards the light.
In The First House, Avni Doshi has written a stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic novel about the self that survives when a marriage does not - and the long, necessary labour of breaking open into something new.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.5 (34)
Includes Goodreads
GenreGeneral Fiction, Mystery and Thriller, Politics and Government
Length6 hrs 27 mins
Narrated byAvni Doshi
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJul 24, 2026
LanguageEnglish
More from Avni Doshi
WhistlerAnn Patchett10h 45m4.6 (4.6K)$29 · $0.00
Demon CopperheadBarbara Kingsolver21h 3m4.5 (949.4K)$46 · $0.00
To Kill a MockingbirdHarper Lee12h 18m4.5 (7.4M)$29 · $0.00
Remarkably Bright CreaturesShelby Van Pelt11h 17m4.4 (1.7M)$29 · $0.00
This Side of Paradise - The Original 1920 Edition (Annotated)F. Scott Fitzgerald11h 30m4.6 (1.6K)$2 · $0.00
War LordBernard Cornwell13h 21m4.6 (33.1K)$33 · $0.00
The Great Gatsby: Original 1925 Edition (An F. Scott Fitzgerald Classic NovelFrancis Scott Fitzgerald4h 45m4.6 (9.3K)$18 · $0.00
Something Like LoveBeverly Jenkins10h 21m4.6 (2.7K)$29 · $0.00
Black History CollectionFrederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois27h 9m4.6 (2.6K)$18 · $0.00
The Old Man and the Sea (Annotated)Ernest Hemingway4h 27m4.6 (1.4K)$2 · $0.00
White HotIlona Andrews13h 18m4.5 (136.9K)$5 · $0.00
The Ghost by the Billabong (The Matilda Saga, #5)Jackie French14h 58m4.6 (773)$33 · $0.00
Cast in BloodMichelle Sagara16h 35m4.6 (607)$33 · $0.00
The Captain Blood Trilogy (Annotated)Rafael Sabatini29h 20m4.6 (1K)$3 · $0.00
Ship of the Line (Annotated)Cecil Louis Troughton Smith11h 13m4.6 (1K)$2 · $0.00
The George Orwell CollectionGeorge Orwell24h 46m4.5 (14.4K)$12 · $0.00
ShivajiRanjit Desai25h 13m4.6 (3.1K)$24 · $0.00
Time RegainedMarcel Proust15h 38m4.5 (9.2K)$2 · $0.00
Driving ForceElle James4h 58m4.6 (407)$20 · $0.00
When God Calls the HeartBrian Bird, Michelle Cox3h 24m4.6 (439)$10 · $0.00
The ReunionJana Deleon6h 31m4.6 (1.6K)$26 · $0.00
To Hold and ProtectSandra Owens7h 59m4.6 (1.1K)$8 · $0.00
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Complete Edition)Arthur Conan Doyle12h 41m4.6 (286.7K)$1.99 · $0.00
Farewell My Lovely (Annotated)Raymond Chandler10h 37m4.6 (1.2K)$2 · $0.00
The Labyrinth of the SpiritsCarlos Ruiz Zafon27h 55m4.5 (77.2K)$53 · $0.00
Olympic Mountain PursuitJodie Bailey5h 55m4.6 (638)$12 · $0.00
Glen AffricKarine Giebel22h 51m4.5 (3.2K)$46 · $0.00
Deadly Badlands PursuitSharee Stover5h 53m4.6 (361)$12 · $0.00
Crime and Punishment (The Unabridged Garnett Translation) (Annotated)Fyodor Dostoevsky24h 25m4.5 (15.4K)$0.99 · $0.00
Three ComradesErich Maria Remarque15h 50m4.5 (47.3K)$2 · $0.00
AngelAnita Waller10h 30m4.6 (672)$30 · $0.00
The BorderDon Winslow29h 8m4.5 (35.7K)$53 · $0.00
FlashpointCatherine Coulter11h 38m4.5 (11.6K)$29 · $0.00
The Gothic Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated Edition)Edgar Allan Poe21h 5m4.5 (2.9K)$1.99 · $0.00
The Man in the Brown Suit & They Came to BaghdadAgatha Christie15h 43m4.6 (495)$33 · $0.00
Fang Si-Chi's First Love ParadiseYi-Han Lin8h 25m4.5 (4K)$26 · $0.00
The Rose CodeKate Quinn16h 2m4.4 (493.7K)$33 · $0.00
No Woman Left BehindJulie Moffett8h 49m4.5 (3K)$25 · $0.00
CovertJanie Crouch6h 15m4.5 (2K)$12 · $0.00
Cold Case InvestigationNicole Helm5h 30m4.6 (321)$5 · $0.00
How to Test Negative for StupidJohn Kennedy8h 13m4.7 (9.7K)$28 · $0.00
Black AF HistoryMichael Harriot15h 43m4.7 (14.6K)$33 · $0.00
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn21h 56m4.7 (8.9K)$46 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
HostageEli Sharabi5h 25m4.6 (10.8K)$24 · $0.00
KrantikariSanjeev Sanyal11h 44m4.6 (1.3K)$16 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
RiggedMollie Hemingway12h 48m4.6 (4.2K)$23 · $0.00
SledgehammerDavid Friedman8h 21m4.7 (589)$26 · $0.00
Citizenship in a Republic (Annotated)Theodore Roosevelt2h 44m4.6 (1.4K)$2 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
UnthinkableJamie Raskin15h 8m4.5 (9.3K)$8 · $0.00
My Fourth Time, We DrownedSally Hayden13h 59m4.6 (2.9K)$23 · $0.00
A Revolution of Common SenseScott Jennings9h 29m4.6 (528)$29 · $0.00
Statement From the Dock at the Rivonia TrialNelson Mandela2h 18m4.6 (1.3K)$1 · $0.00
Lessons from the EdgeMarie Yovanovitch17h 11m4.5 (5.9K)$40 · $0.00
To Rescue the American SpiritBret Baier10h 12m4.5 (2.7K)$8 · $0.00
You may also like
All of ThisRebecca Woolf6h 22m3.8 (2.9K)$24 · $0.00
The Patience StoneAtiq Rahimi3h 19m3.9 (7.6K)$14 · $0.00
Break Up On PurposeJohn Kim6h 26m4.3 (280)$24 · $0.00
Will and TestamentVigdis Hjorth8h 33m4.0 (25.6K)$20 · $0.00
BaggageAlan Cumming8h 36m4.2 (4.9K)$26 · $0.00
HILL TOWNSAnne Rivers Siddons2h 58m3.8 (5.5K)$18 · $0.00
Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t SandwichesJennifer Welch, Angie Sullivan5h 32m4.2 (4.6K)$24 · $0.00
The TruthNeil Strauss16h 49m4.3 (9.3K)$40 · $0.00
Who Is Wellness For?Fariha Roisin10h 25m3.8 (1.7K)$29 · $0.00
Some Bright NowhereAnn Packer7h 14m3.5 (14.5K)$28 · $0.00
Three WishesLiane Moriarty12h 55m3.9 (164.7K)$33 · $0.00
A Dress the Color of the SkyJennifer Irwin10h 26m4.5 (457)$20
Mommy TrackedWhitney Gaskell11h 54m3.6 (2.5K)$20 · $0.00
Behind You Is the SeaSusan Muaddi Darraj6h 31m4.2 (10.5K)$7 · $0.00
Love in Case of EmergencyDaniela Krien7h 3m3.7 (8.2K)$24 · $0.00
Grown WomenSarai Johnson14h 5m4.4 (5.1K)$33 · $0.00
HerzogSaul Bellow15h 36m3.8 (29.7K)$25 · $0.00
The Death of Ivan IlychLeo Tolstoy2h 30m4.2 (283.3K)$2.30
Music TalesAndrew Goldman7h$17
Twelve MenTheodore Dreiser12h 54m3.6 (82)$2.30