The Light Room

By: Kate Zambreno

Narrated by: Kate Zambreno

“Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup.“—Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

From “one of our most formally ambitious writers” (Esquire), a moving account of caretaking in a time of uncertainty and loss

In The Light Room, Zambreno offers her most profound and affecting work yet: a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty about public health, climate change, and the future we can expect for our children. Moving through the seasons, returning often to parks and green spaces, Zambreno captures the isolation and exhaustion of being home with a baby and a small child, but also small and transcendent moments of beauty and joy. Inspired by writers and artists ranging from Natalia Ginzburg to Joseph Cornell, Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Etel Adnan to David Wojnarowicz, The Light Room represents an impassioned appreciation of community and the commons, and an ecstatic engagement with the living world.

How will our memories, and our children’s, be affected by this time of profound disconnection? What does it mean to bring new life, and new work, into this moment of precarity and crisis? In The Light Room, Kate Zambreno offers a vision of how to live in ways that move away from disenchantment, and toward light and possibility.

©2023 Kate Zambreno (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“With The Light Room, Zambreno—one of our most prolific and curious minds—chronicles what it’s like to be a mother amidst the various crises of this chaotic moment in history.”—Vulture

“Despite the unfathomable distractions we're all facing, Zambreno writes with a sense of hope that will especially resonate with anyone who's soldiered through pandemic-era parenting.”—Harper's Bazaar

“Kate Zambreno has performed a miracle, capturing real, lived time from within the exhaustion of pandemic-era parenthood. The Light Room reminded me of that fundamental magic of writing—that the details of another person's life, so precisely and honestly rendered, can instantly loosen the edges of your own life and make you feel less alone.”—Jenny Odell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Do Nothing