A Little Life cover art

A Little Life

The million-copy bestseller, shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

A Little Life

By: Hanya Yanagihara
Narrated by: Matt Bomer
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Matt Bomer's heart-rending narration in this new audiobook edition offers a fresh and poignant listening experience of Hanya Yanagihara's timeless modern classic. Perfect if you're an A Little Life fan or a new listener.

'I'm not exaggerating when I say this novel challenged everything I thought I knew about love and friendship. It's one of those books that stays with you forever' – Dua Lipa

The million-copy bestseller, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, by the author of To Paradise, is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance.


Winner of Fiction of the Year at the British Book Awards
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize
Finalist for the US National Book Award for Fiction


When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome – but that will define his life forever.

'Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind' – The Times

Read by Golden Globe winner and star of Fellow Travellers, Matt Bomer.

'Matt Bomer’s narration brings a steady and thoughtful presence to an emotionally intense novel . . . His ability to balance the novel’s dark themes with its moments of warmth ensures a compelling listening experience' – AudioFile Magazine

Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Urban Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Tear-jerking Fiction

Critic reviews

A singularly profound and moving work . . . It's not often that you read a book of this length and find yourself thinking "I wish it was longer" but Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind
A book unlike any other . . . A devastating read that will leave your heart, like the Grinch's, a few sizes larger
Exquisite . . . The book shifts from a generational portrait to something darker and more tender: an examination of the depths of human cruelty, counterbalanced by the restorative powers of friendship
[A] wholly immersive unforgettable read . . . You won't stop reading. And it's a novel that changes you
Utterly compelling . . . quite an extraordinary novel. It is impossible to put down . . . And it is almost impossible to forget
Hypnotic . . . An intimate, operatic friendship between four men
A Little Life is unlike anything else out there. Over the top, beyond the pale and quite simply unforgettable
Piercing . . . [Yanagihara is] an author with the talent to interrogate the basest and most beautiful extremes of human behaviour with sustained, bruising intensity
Capacious and consuming . . . Immersive
Beautiful
Remarkable. . . . An epic study of trauma and friendship written with such intelligence and depth of perception that it will be one of the benchmarks against which all other novels that broach those subjects (and they are legion) will be measured
Astonishing
Deeply moving . . . A wrenching portrait of the enduring grace of friendship
Affecting and transcendent
All stars
Most relevant
A rollercoaster of emotion taking the reader eventually to understanding the varieties of causes which devevelop a life.

Heart rending story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Matt Bomer brings to life this heartbreaking story of love, friendship and trauma with genuine pathos and quiet compassion

Heartbreaking, haunting and beautiful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This book was the most harrowing I’ve listened to in the years I’ve been an audible fan. The author told a story so heart- breaking. I felt I knew the characters to the point I was crying in frustration for Jude’s life’s experiences. This book will stay with me, thought provoking and sad.

So sad so deep

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

* this is not my normal type of read but I cancelled plans to keep listening to it.
* beautifully read,
* at times I physically winced at the descriptions of pain, cutting and abuse.
* unforgettable

this book possessed me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I had some interest when one of them has pain and the other can't do anything but 5 chapters in I'm struggling to stay awake...can't even remember who is who. Nothing happening. I give up.

Well written, well narrated but after hours still nothing has happened and I simply cannot relate.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews