Becoming Madame Mao
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Becoming Madame Mao
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Narrated by:
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Andi Arndt
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By:
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Anchee Min
About this listen
From the best-selling author of Red Azalea, this extraordinary novel tells the stirring, erotically charged story of Madame Mao Zedong, the woman almost universally known as the 'white-boned demon,' whom many hold directly responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Bringing her lush psychological insight to bear on the facts of history, Min penetrates the myth surrounding this woman and provides a "convincing, nuanced portrait of a damaged personality" (Entertainment Weekly) driven by ambition, betrayal, and a never-to-be-fulfilled need to be loved. With all the compressed drama and high lyrical poetry of great opera, Becoming Madame Mao is a "remarkable accomplishment.... Madame Mao is finally given her own voice" (Ha Jin).
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"Behind every good man," the old saying goes, "is a great woman." When that man passes away, however, sometimes the reputation of the woman quickly tarnishes. This is exactly what author Anchee Min looks at with her audiobook Madame Mao. Jiang Qing, known colloquially as Madame Mao or "white-boned demon", rose to prominence with her husband Mao Zedong and became one of the most controversial figures of the People's Republic of China. Performed with a fierce and energetic delivery by veteran Andi Arndt, Madame Mao is a powerful examination of the events that led to Jiang Qinq's demise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fabulous story
- By Paddington on 10-19-12
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Palace of Tears
- By: Julian Leatherdale
- Narrated by: Ming-Zhu Hii
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
The dazzling story of family, passion, secrets and vengeance, woven through the hardships of both World Wars and revealing the intriguing history of the Palace, the opulent Blue Mountains hotel famed for its luxury and mysterious owner. A sweltering summer's day, January 1914: the charismatic and ruthless Adam Fox throws a lavish birthday party for his son and heir at his elegant clifftop hotel in the Blue Mountains. Everyone is invited except Angie, the girl from the cottage next door.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Distractingly bad acting by narrator!
- By Bunny on 01-30-16
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Stories of Eva Luna
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Pena
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
Immerse yourself in a world of love, vengeance, compassion, and irony with the evocative stories of Eva Luna. Author Isabel Allende introduced this well-loved character to audiences in her earlier novel, Eva Luna. Listen to Allende talk about the role of writing in her life in Giving Birth, Finding Form. This program also features Alice Walker and Jean Shinoda Bolen.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Better some Allende than no Allende
- By Perschon on 12-04-14
By: Isabel Allende
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The Vagrants
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Jackie Chung
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lovely prose, good story, deadly narration
- By Athene on 05-10-13
By: Yiyun Li
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 207
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Story4 out of 5 stars 208
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 343
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 302
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 302
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
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1 out of 5 stars
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His life was interesting, but not his memoir
- By DR Harle on 01-27-19
By: Amos Oz
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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The Red-Haired Woman
- A Novel
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee, Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 76
On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Drags On
- By T. Conrad on 10-25-17
By: Orhan Pamuk
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Mao's Last Dancer
- Young Readers' Edition
- By: Li Cunxin
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
One day, not so very many years ago, a small peasant boy was chosen to study ballet at the Beijing Dance Academy. His mother urged him to take this chance of a lifetime. But Li was only eleven years old and he was scared and lonely, pushed away from all that he had ever known and loved. He hated the strict training routines and the strange place he had been brought to. All he wanted to do was go home - to his mother, father, and six brothers, to his own small village. But soon Li realised that his mother was right. He had the chance to do something special with his life - and he never turned back.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Happiness rising from the injustise
- By Natasha on 10-29-13
By: Li Cunxin
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Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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The Corpse Washer
- By: Sinan Antoon
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in defiance of his father's wishes and determined to forge his own path. But the circumstances of history dictate otherwise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gorgeous story with talented narration
- By N. Barnes on 03-11-18
By: Sinan Antoon
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The Submission
- A Novel
- By: Amy Waldman
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 185
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4 out of 5 stars 157
Claire Harwell hasn't settled into grief; events haven't let her. Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the 9/11 widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe. She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Some books were meant to be read...
- By Barbara on 02-24-12
By: Amy Waldman
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The Museum of Innocence
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 326
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 246
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Story4 out of 5 stars 246
Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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5 out of 5 stars
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one of the very best I've ever heard
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 03-06-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 94
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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In the First Circle
- By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harry T. Willets - translator
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 31 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 564
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 493
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 491
Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949. The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state - or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps, and almost certain death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
What listeners say about Becoming Madame Mao
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Reader in New Mexico
- 02-02-21
Engaging and Informative
This was a terrific way for me to learn about important 20th Century events and people about whom I knew very little before. This book made accessible and real to me things that everyone should know!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- caitlin
- 09-03-15
First person to third
The story was a little confusing because it kept switching from first person to third person with no warning and made some parts of the story hard to follow . Overall it was a good book and plenty of detail and it was a great glimpse into the life of the chairmans last wife. Enjoyed reading about her early begins and her fall from power after Mao died .
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