They Went Left cover art

They Went Left

 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.

They Went Left

By: Monica Hesse
Narrated by: Caitlin Davies
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 £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

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

 A tour de force historical mystery from Monica Hesse, the bestselling and award-winning author of Girl in the Blue Coat. Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal, her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.

Zofia's last words to her brother were a promise: Abek to Zofia, A to Z. When I find you again, we will fill our alphabet. Now her journey to fulfill that vow takes her through Poland and Germany, and into a displaced persons camp where everyone she meets is trying to piece together a future from a painful past: Miriam, desperately searching for the twin she was separated from after they survived medical experimentation. Breine, a former heiress, who now longs only for a simple wedding with her new fiancé. And Josef, who guards his past behind a wall of secrets, and is beautiful and strange and magnetic all at once.

But the deeper Zofia digs, the more impossible her search seems. How can she find one boy in a sea of the missing? In the rubble of a broken continent, Zofia must delve into a mystery whose answers could break her—or help her rebuild her world. Family & Relationships Historical Historical Fiction Literature & Fiction Mysteries & Detectives Mystery Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Romance Fiction War

Listeners also enjoyed...

 You've Reached Sam cover art
As Bright as Heaven cover art
Half in Shadow cover art
The Paper Girl of Paris cover art
A Feather on the Water cover art
Our Darkest Night cover art
Time Zero cover art
What the Night Sings cover art
The Book of Harlan cover art
The Forgotten Home Child cover art
The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding cover art
Broken Angels cover art
The Light in Hidden Places cover art
I Have Lived a Thousand Years cover art
Secrets of a Charmed Life cover art
Beneath a Scarlet Sky cover art

Critic reviews

"Hesse writes with tenderness and insight about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive and the ways we cobble together family with whatever we have. When the plot twists come, they are gut punches--some devastating, others offering hope... Crucial."—New York Times Book Review
"beautifully tragic...an incredibly impressive novel about a timeframe and group of people that history often forgets. Their stories will stay with me forever."—--Hypable
* "A heartbreaking and heartwarming story of survival, loss, and renewal. Sure to please a variety of readers; those interested in historical fiction, romance, and mystery will not be able to put this book down."—School Library Journal, starred review
* "Hesse again proves to be a master of verisimilitude, bringing the realities of existence in the immediate postwar period to visceral life through painstaking detail. Her beautifully realized, highly empathetic characters come to life, too, in the pages of this superbly crafted novel...like real life, there is heartbreaking sadness here but also hope that life, finally, will be whole and fine, A to Z."—Booklist, starred review
* "Hesse's meticulous research is evident on every page but never distracts from her propulsive plot. Combining history, romance and mystery, They Went Left is a heartbreaking yet hopeful story of what it takes to survive after trauma."—BookPage, starred review
* "Compelling."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
* "Featuring factual locations and covering a period of time not often focused on, this is an excellent book to add to a Holocaust collection. ...This book would be valuable for all high schools and should be considered a must-purchase."

—School Library Connection, starred review
"A heartbreaking, gorgeously written story...The ending left me breathless and awed by its expression of enduring love."—Jewell Parker Rhodes, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Boys
"Zofia's harrowing journey to find Abek and the fellow survivors she meets along the way will stay with the reader--particularly the echoes of the present evoked in a narrative of the past."—Refinery29
No reviews yet