Death Is Hard Work
A Novel
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Death Is Hard Work
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Narrated by:
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Neil Shah
About this listen
Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination.
Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is - after all - only a two-hour drive from Damascus.
There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone.
With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings' decision to set aside their differences and honor their father's request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way - as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed - will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them.
©2016 Hachette-Antoine; Translation copyright 2019 by Leri Price (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 888
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 889
When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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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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I Am a Bacha Posh
- My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan
- By: Ukmina Manoori, Stephanie Lebrun, Peter E. Chianchiano - translator
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 264
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 233
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 231
"You will be a son, my daughter." With these stunning words Ukmina learned that she was to spend her childhood as a boy. In Afghanistan there is a widespread practice of girls dressing as boys to play the role of a son. These children are called bacha posh: literally "girls dressed as boys." This practice offers families the freedom to allow their child to shop and work - and in some cases, it saves them from the disgrace of not having a male heir. But in adolescence, religion restores the natural law.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good story, awful pronunciation
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-21
By: Ukmina Manoori, and others
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For the Love of a Son
- One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child
- By: Jean Sasson
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman. She had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life. A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arranged a traditional marriage to a fellow Afghan, who turned out to be a violent man....
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4 out of 5 stars
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About all stories have a happy ending
- By Stacy on 04-04-16
By: Jean Sasson
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The Aquariums of Pyongyang
- By: Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 284
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 246
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Story5 out of 5 stars 247
Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education". Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Riveting!!
- By Iread on 11-12-20
By: Chol-hwan Kang, and others
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Behind Enemy Lines
- The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
- By: Marthe Cohn, Wendy Holden
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story5 out of 5 stars 92
Marthe Cohn was a young Jewish woman living just across the German border in France when Hitler rose to power. Her family sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, including Jewish children sent away by their terrified parents. But soon her homeland was also under Nazi rule. As the Nazi occupation escalated, Marthe's sister was arrested and sent to Auschwitz and the rest of her family was forced to flee to the south of France. Always a fighter, Marthe joined the French Army and became a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing story of a fighter and survivor
- By Magalie Busch on 05-06-19
By: Marthe Cohn, and others
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Dancing with the Enemy
- My Family's Holocaust Secret
- By: Paul Glaser
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster, Christa Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
The gripping story of the author's aunt, a Jewish dance instructor who was betrayed to the Nazis by the two men she loved, yet managed to survive WWII by teaching dance lessons to the SS at Auschwitz. Her epic life becomes a window into the author's own past and the key to discovering his Jewish roots.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing Unique
- By Nordic Artisan on 05-11-19
By: Paul Glaser
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Country of Ash
- A Jewish Doctor in Poland, 1939-1945
- By: Edward Reicher, Magda Bogin - translator
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
Country of Ash is the starkly compelling, original chronicle of a Jewish doctor who miraculously survived near-certain death, first inside the Lodz and Warsaw ghettoes, where he was forced to treat the Gestapo, then on the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he hid under numerous disguises. He clandestinely recorded the terrible events he witnessed, but his manuscript disappeared during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, reunited with his wife and young daughter, he rewrote his story.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By valia on 07-12-15
By: Edward Reicher, and others
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
- By: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 415
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 380
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Story5 out of 5 stars 379
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very interesting and well told
- By Tracy F. on 03-31-23
By: Tova Friedman, and others
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Brothers of the Gun
- A Memoir of the Syrian War
- By: Marwan Hisham, Molly Crabapple
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends - fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq - joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm in arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another’s eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfect with Peter Ganim
- By Anonymous User on 06-14-24
By: Marwan Hisham, and others
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Growing Up bin Laden
- Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
- By: Jean Sasson, Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 113
A true story that few ever believed would come to light, Growing Up bin Laden uncovers startling revelations and hidden secrets carefully guarded by the most wanted terrorist of our lifetime, Osama bin Laden.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating. I could not stop listening.
- By Curatina on 04-14-10
By: Jean Sasson, and others
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After the Roundup
- Escape and Survival in Hitler’s France
- By: Joseph Weismann
- Narrated by: J. Clark Allison
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up 11-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated. A thousand children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A “must-listen” book
- By Jonathan R Scupin on 09-25-18
By: Joseph Weismann
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The Home That Was Our Country
- By: Alia Malek
- Narrated by: Alia Malek
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parents' decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians—the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds—who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country
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5 out of 5 stars
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Syria as never read before
- By rami hachwi on 09-17-18
By: Alia Malek
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Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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The Attack
- By: Yasmina Khadra
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 253
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a respected, dedicated surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. He has learned to live with the violence that plagues his city and works tirelessly to help the victims brought to the emergency room. But one night, a deadly bombing in a local restaurant takes a horrifyingly personal turn, when his wife's body is found among the dead, bearing injuries that match those typically found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Powerful
- By Diana - Audible on 04-17-12
By: Yasmina Khadra
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Always Remember Your Name
- A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz
- By: Andra Bucci, Tatiana Bucci
- Narrated by: Gabrielle De Cuir
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
On March 28, 1944, six-year-old Tati and her four-year-old sister, Andra, were roused from their sleep and arrested. Along with their mother, Mira, their aunt, and cousin Sergio, they were deported to Auschwitz. Over 230,000 children were deported to the camp, where Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, performed deadly experiments on them. Only a few dozen children survived, Tati and Andra among them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Important read!
- By Holly Thomas on 02-24-22
By: Andra Bucci, and others
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The Pendulum
- A Granddaughter's Search for Her Family's Forbidden Nazi Past
- By: Julie Lindahl
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 253
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 225
This powerful memoir traces Brazilian-born American Julie Lindahl's journey to uncover her grandparents' role in the Third Reich, as she is driven to understand how and why they became members of Hitler's elite, the SS. Out of the unbearable heart of the story - the unclaimed guilt that devours a family through the generations - emerges an unflinching will to learn the truth.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exceptional
- By Jean on 01-14-19
By: Julie Lindahl
What listeners say about Death Is Hard Work
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
- David Elliott
- 06-10-24
Today's Hell for Those Paying Attention
A searing portrait of the contemporary Middle East in a state of civil war. Reading like autobiography, it clearly derives from personal experience and first hand accounts told to the award winning author who to this day chooses to remain in the war zone that is Syria.
While Khalifa's writing has received attention in the west, I find that attention is less than what is deserved. Why is the praise followed with qualifications, implying this scholar is at closer examination rather a backwater crank, a primative. Rather a condescending "Pity he isn't developing his talents more fully somewhere, say at Oxford" instead on focusing on distant horrors!
To me, this, the first work of his I've read, makes him an Arab Elie Wiesel, that other teller of backwater horrors, in his case Romania. And I'm snapping up his other works available on Audible.
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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
- Sam Farah
- 02-23-24
A gem
Lost for words at the end of this journey.. a book that is screening to be made into a movie. Death is hard work.
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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
- Susan
- 03-20-19
The bleakness of living in a war-torn country!
We are used to Syria being an item in the news, and roll our eyes at the intractability if the Middle East. This is a story from the shattered inside of that unfortunate country, written by a master storyteller and well narrated by Neil Shah. Hard to listen to at times - I had to take a break from time to time- but well worth your time.
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1 person found this helpful
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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
- Catherine
- 05-31-19
Oooph! Heartbreaking Book.
Beautifully written. My basic feelings of hopefulness put to the test at every turn. Was the trip Anabiya a metaphor for the war?
I want to read more from Khalifa.
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