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Narrated by:
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Ben Arogundade
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By:
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Akwaeke Emezi
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents Content Warning by Akwaeke Emezi, read by Ben Arogundade.
A triumph ... A wholly original and creative mind' NEW YORK TIMES
‘A multi-genre phenomena, it’s a triumph of a creative mind’ GLAMOUR
‘Frightens and astonishes ... Combines Maya Angelou’s passion and Sylvia Plath’s devastating self-inquisition' GUARDIAN
‘Emezi is a dream of a writer’ BOLU BABALOLA
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A fiercely contemporary collection which renegotiates the contract between poet and reader in the light of this moment in human history, from the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji
Content Warning: Everything concerns itself with the fugitive nature of being in the world especially, but not exclusively, within blackness. The poems reshape possibilities for poetry by paying close attention to the author's rhythm of thought, making a series of durable anthems from the noise of the contemporary moment.
In this bold debut poetry collection, Akwaeke Emezi – award-winning author of Freshwater, PET, The Death of Vivek Oji and Dear Senthuran – imagines a new depth of belonging. Crafted of both divine and earthly materials, these poems travel from home to homesickness, tracing desire to surrender and abuse to survival, while mapping out a chosen family that includes the son of god, mary auntie, and magdalene with the chestnut eyes.
Written from a spiritfirst perspective and celebrating the essence of self that is impossible to drown, kill, or reduce, Content Warning: Everything distills the radiant power and epic grief of a mischievous and wanting young deity, embodied.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Magical Negro is an archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. Focused primarily on depictions of black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics - of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Waste of time
- By Lida on 07-19-20
By: Morgan Parker
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Freshwater
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Akwaeke Emezi
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 717
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 635
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Story4 out of 5 stars 632
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side". Unsettling, heart-wrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Just ok.
- By Alexa on 07-02-18
By: Akwaeke Emezi
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Orange World and Other Stories
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 158
Karen Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner in lives is on full display in these eight exuberant, arrestingly vivid, unforgettable stories. In “Bog Girl”, a revelatory story about first love, a young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl that he’s extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In “The Prospectors”, two opportunistic young women fleeing the depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. Plus much more.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wild Ride
- By Georgia on 02-07-20
By: Karen Russell
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A Phoenix First Must Burn
- Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope
- By: Patrice Caldwell - editor
- Narrated by: York Whitaker
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Evoking Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler’s heirs have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that puts Black women and gender-nonconforming individuals at its center. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters through which you cannot help but see yourself reflected.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely brilliant
- By Ruthi on 03-11-20
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The Invasion of Heaven
- Part One of the Newirth Mythology
- By: Michael B. Koep
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 373
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 343
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Story4 out of 5 stars 342
Psychologist Loche Newirth becomes hunted when he sees a painting that opens a window onto the afterlife. An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness, and beyond. The first part of Michael B. Koep's the Newirth Mythology The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder, and madness. Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: The 50-foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good story - well written
- By Amy Q on 05-17-20
By: Michael B. Koep
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There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 110
The only thing more beautiful than Beyoncé is God, and God is a black woman sipping rosé and drawing a lavender bath, texting her mom, belly laughing in the therapist's office, feeling unloved, being on display, daring to survive. Morgan Parker stands at the intersections of vulnerability and performance, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence. Unrelentingly feminist, tender, and ruthless, these poems are an altar to the complexities of black American womanhood in an age of non-indictments and déjà vu.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Just no.
- By Janice on 07-08-20
By: Morgan Parker
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Tales from the Hinterland
- The Hazel Wood
- By: Melissa Albert
- Narrated by: Rebecca Soler
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice - and still lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Does not disappoint
- By Harley Easton on 02-22-21
By: Melissa Albert
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Mage's Blood
- The Moontide Quartet, Book 1
- By: David Hair
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 26 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,040
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,791
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,788
Most of the time the Moontide Bridge lies deep below the sea, but every 12 years the tides sink and the bridge is revealed, its gates open for trade. The Magi are hell-bent on ruling this new world, and for the last two Moontides they have led armies across the bridge on "crusades of conquest". Now, the third Moontide is almost here, and this time the people of the East are ready for a fight... but it is three seemingly ordinary people that will decide the fate of the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Nick Podehl
- By Logan on 01-05-15
By: David Hair
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Bone
- By: Yrsa Daley-Ward, Kiese Laymon - foreword
- Narrated by: Yrsa Daley-Ward, Kiese Laymon
- Length: 1 hr and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society’s expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward’s bone resonates to the core of what it means to be human.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Visceral,blood hot, thrilling poetry-prose
- By Pam on 12-28-22
By: Yrsa Daley-Ward, and others
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New American Best Friend
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story5 out of 5 stars 13
One of the most recognizable young poets in America, Olivia Gatwood dazzles with her tribute to contemporary American womanhood in her debut book, New American Best Friend. Gatwood's poems deftly deconstruct traditional stereotypes. The focus shifts from childhood to adulthood, gender to sexuality, violence to joy. And always and inexorably, the book moves toward celebration, culminating in a series of odes: odes to the body, to tough women, to embracing your own journey in all its failures and triumphs.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Amazing poetry, but the music
- By Keaira on 07-29-19
By: Olivia Gatwood
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We Want Our Bodies Back
- Poems
- By: Jessica Care Moore
- Narrated by: Jessica Care Moore
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 17
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Story5 out of 5 stars 17
Over the past two decades, Jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just beautiful.
- By @oil_house_ (IG) on 02-25-21
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Above Us Only Sky
- By: Michele Young-Stone
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
Prudence Eleanor Vilkas was born with a pair of wings molded to her back. Considered a birth defect, her wings were surgically removed, leaving only the ghost of them behind. Growing up in Los Vientos, Florida, Prudence meets her long-estranged Lithuanian grandfather and discovers a miraculous lineage beating and pulsing with past Lithuanian bird-women.
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4 out of 5 stars
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I'm So Glad I Listened to It!
- By Elizabeth on 08-22-16
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The Death of Artemio Cruz
- A Novel
- By: Carlos Fuentes, Alfred MacAdam - translator
- Narrated by: Tony Chiroldes
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 80
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 80
As the novel opens, Artemio Cruz, the all-powerful newspaper magnate and land baron, lies confined to his bed and, in dreamlike flashes, recalls the pivotal episodes of his life. Carlos Fuentes manipulates the ensuing kaleidoscope of images with dazzling inventiveness, layering memory upon memory, from Cruz’s heroic campaigns during the Mexican Revolution, through his relentless climb from poverty to wealth, to his uneasy death. Perhaps Fuentes’ masterpiece, The Death of Artemio Cruz is a haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Writing
- By Kelly B. on 05-01-14
By: Carlos Fuentes, and others
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At Night All Blood Is Black
- A Novel
- By: David Diop, Anna Moschovakis - translator
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 311
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 260
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 257
Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Compelling story, poor narration
- By Shauna on 07-10-21
By: David Diop, and others
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors
- By: Nayomi Munaweera
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 101
Yasodhara tells the story of her own Sinhala family, rich in love, with everything they could ask for. As a child in idyllic Colombo, social hierarchies, their parents’ ambitions, teenage love shape Yasodhara and her siblings’ lives, and, subtly, the differences between Tamil and Sinhala people; but the peace is shattered by the tragedies of war. Yasodhara's family escapes to Los Angeles. But Yasodhara's life has already become intertwined with a young Tamil girl's.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pronunciation
- By Mahidevran on 04-07-18
By: Nayomi Munaweera
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Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing Story
- By Alexa :3 on 09-26-24
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Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,004
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,592
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,577
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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Everything Is Illuminated
- By: Jonathan Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Story4 out of 5 stars 93
With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Astounding reading
- By bookworm123abc on 02-10-23