Little Gods
A Novel
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Little Gods
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Narrated by:
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Karen Huie
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Francois Chau
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Emily Woo Zeller
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By:
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Meng Jin
About this listen
“Expands the future of the immigrant novel.” (Gish Jen, New York Times Book Review)
“Spectacular and emotionally polyphonic.... That Jin has managed to craft such an intimate, emotionally complex story is an awesome achievement. That she managed to do it in her debut novel, doubly so.” (Omar El Akkad, BookPage, starred review)
On the night of June 4th, a woman gives birth in a Beijing hospital alone. Thus begins the unraveling of Su Lan, a brilliant physicist who until this moment has successfully erased her past, fighting what she calls the mind’s arrow of time.
Seventeen years later, Su Lan’s daughter, Liya, brings her mother’s ashes to China, along with the silences and contradictions of Su Lan’s life. In a territory inhabited by the ghosts of the living and the dead, Liya’s memories are joined by those of two others: Zhu Wen, the woman last to know Su Lan before she left China, and Yongzong, the father Liya has never known. In this way a portrait of Su Lan emerges: an ambitious scientist, an ambivalent mother, and a woman whose relationship to her own history shapes and ultimately unmakes Liya’s own sense of displacement.
A story of migrations literal and emotional, spanning time, space, and class, Little Gods is a sharp yet expansive exploration of the aftermath of unfulfilled dreams, an immigrant story in negative that grapples with our tenuous connections to memory, history, and self.
©2020 Meng Jin (P)2020 HarperAudioListeners also enjoyed...
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"A trio of gifted narrators performs this debut novel told from alternating points of view.... All the narrators imbue the characters with personality and bring them to life. Their performances play well together, each engaging the listener. Huie's quiet, expressive style, Chau's mild manner, and Zeller's versatility ensure that each of their protagonists comes to the forefront of her chapters. A beautiful production." (AudioFile Magazine)
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Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
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The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 166
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4 out of 5 stars 142
A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Overly ambitious
- By Placeholder on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
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The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
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The Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
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My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
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The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 682
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 595
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 595
For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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On Division
- A Novel
- By: Goldie Goldbloom
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just a block or two up from the East River on Division Avenue, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her 10 children range in age from 13 to 39. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania, live on the first floor of their house. Her daughter Tzila Ruchel lives on the second. She and Yidel, a scribe in such demand that he makes only a few Torah scrolls a year, live on the third. Wed when Surie was 16, they have a happy marriage and a full life, and, at the ages of 57 and 62, they are looking forward to some quiet time together.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A great book
- By Sab on 04-24-20
By: Goldie Goldbloom
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,167
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,887
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,894
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
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5 out of 5 stars
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We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
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A Girl Is a Body of Water
- By: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Narrated by: Tovah Ott
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
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3 out of 5 stars
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African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
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Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Complete Stories
- By: Clarice Lispector, Katrina Dodson, Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful Collection
- By XX on 04-25-20
By: Clarice Lispector, and others
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In the Time of Our History
- By: Susanne Pari
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story5 out of 5 stars 41
Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita's death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents' home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of "The One Year." Ana is always in Mitra's heart, though they chose very different paths. While Ana, sweet and dutiful, bowed to their domineering father's demands and married, Mitra rebelled, and was banished.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyable
- By J. E. Jordan on 05-23-23
By: Susanne Pari
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Sanshiro
- Penguin Classics
- By: Natsume Soseki, Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin
- Narrated by: Andrew Koji
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro's doomed innocence, the novel comes to life. Sanshiro is also penetrating social and cultural commentary.
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3 out of 5 stars
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This story had no point.
- By icelandicponies on 12-30-21
By: Natsume Soseki, and others
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The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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Blood Wedding
- By: Pierre Lemaitre, Frank Wynne - translator
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
Sophie Duguet is losing her grip. Haunted by visions from her past of her loving husband, who committed suicide after a car accident. One morning she wakes to find Leo, the child in her care, strangled in his bed by Sophie's own shoelaces. She can remember nothing of the night before. Could she really have killed him? She flees in panic, but this only cements her guilt in the eyes of the law. Not long afterwards it happens again - she wakes with blood on her hands, with no memory of the murder committed.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Twisted
- By SH on 02-04-24
By: Pierre Lemaitre, and others
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Virgins of Paradise
- By: Barbara Wood
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
Jasmine and Camelia Rasheed grow to womanhood under the watchful eye of their grandmother inside the walls surrounding a beautiful house on Virgins of Paradise Street in exotic Cairo. They come of age in society in which the subjugation of women is assumed - they must wear veils, are forbidden to leave the house, have no independent rights, and are circumcised to ensure purity and obedience.
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4 out of 5 stars
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eye opening
- By C Ohana on 11-13-08
By: Barbara Wood
What listeners say about Little Gods
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Yvonne Beckman
- 06-12-21
Great story but fizzled in the end
This story started simply , spare and beautiful. Then it evolve in too many gratuitous side stories , twists , America speak and cliche values ( did her backpack really need to get stolen? )which dragged down the magic of
the thing . Brilliant women were reduced to hopeless helpless creatures and the men were flawed in their own ways too. I felt sad for every Chinese person I saw dragging a baby and a book bag around at US campuses I used to visit.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- OwlLover
- 08-06-20
Lots of POVs and story lines
This is an interesting story. I really enjoyed the women's points of view. The men's got more interesting toward the end, but their voices weren't as distinct. I enjoyed the journey, and having information revealed slowly by different characters. There was definitely a strong connection to the mother, and empathy for the daughter grew in the last half of the book. The narration is good.
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28 people 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
- Anonymous User
- 08-31-20
Glad I found this one!
Elegant, unique and very engaging with wonderful moments of science and truly memorable characters. Excellent narration was a plus.
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2 people 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
- shlubbs
- 01-18-24
I don't have a single complaint.
Went into it fully blind as I closed my eyes and scrolled to a title in my library at random. Within the first chapter I was entirely sucked in. Thematically, it's incredibly relevant to me right now with its examination of motherhood and the way it changes everything.
Had me in tears more than once, and holding them back probably half the time. Many excerpts of this story are downright haunting; Zhu Wen's description of her husband's ghosts, for example. Every line in this entire damn novel is just heartbreaking.
The prose is beautiful and the story is gripping despite being one of the "nothing actually happens"
type books; which may be why some have a hard time feeling vested, but personally I have such a weakness for these when executed well. It took me 11 days to read it (I've been super busy) and not a single day passed since my first dip where I haven't thought about it and yearned to immerse myself in Su Lan's world again, as narrated through the people fulfilling different roles in her mysterious and dynamic life; the planets orbiting her sun.
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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
- D. Lopez
- 08-22-20
Excellent Story!
I enjoyed this story a lot. I finished it straight thru. The narrator's also did a fabulous job.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- bluedrgn52
- 09-12-20
liked it right up until the end
it's good overall until the ending. Nothing is answered and it's confusing. I wish it was clearer there but otherwise good.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Britt
- 02-11-20
Amazing Read, planning to buy the hardcover!
An enthralling journey through time to uncover the past, except our key character Su Lan doesn't want it exposed. Loved loved loved it!!!
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26 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- suzy
- 09-27-20
Confusing
The narrators are exceptional. The story line is difficult to follow at times. Historical references of the various revolutions post WWll in China helped place context for the characters situations
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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
- Kathleen A. McCabe
- 08-26-20
wonderful journey through time and space
I loved the story the characters, the mixing in of Chinese culture and language. science and experience. highly recommend.
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5 people 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
- Ron Doster
- 09-04-20
Intriguing story
A journey through several lifetimes in Shanghai, Beijing, other remote areas of China, to Los Angeles and back again. A story woven out of peasantry, intellect, politics, physics, mysticism and philosophy. So interesting.
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2 people found this helpful