Medusa's Ankles
Selected Stories
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Medusa's Ankles
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Narrated by:
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Esther Wane
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Matthew Lloyd Davies
About this listen
A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights" (The New York Times Book Review). With an introduction by David Mitchell, best-selling author of Cloud Atlas.
Mirrors shatter at the hairdresser's when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real.
Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her listeners beyond the veneer of the ordinary - even beyond the gloss of the fantastical - to places rich and strange and wholly unforgettable.
Cover image: © 2021 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
©1990, 2021 A. S. Byatt (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A book that will challenge you to think.
- By Kelly on 04-23-17
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,089
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,398
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,391
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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Wicked
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- By: Gregory Maguire
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 19 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 10,159
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 7,267
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Story4 out of 5 stars 7,306
Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
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5 out of 5 stars
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It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
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The Blue Guitar
- A Novel
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: Gerry O'Brien
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 40
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and Ancient Light, a new novel - at once trenchant, witty, and shattering - about the intricacies of artistic creation and theft, and about the ways in which we learn to possess one another and to hold on to ourselves. Equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, our narrator, Oliver Otway Orme, is a painter of some renown and a petty thief who does not steal for profit and has never before been caught.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Masterful
- By Amazon customer on 11-25-15
By: John Banville
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Trigger Warning
- Short Fictions and Disturbances
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,244
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,863
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,844
In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction--stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013--as well as "Black Dog", a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.
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4 out of 5 stars
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It Triggered Me to Stay Up Late and Listen
- By Jan on 02-10-15
By: Neil Gaiman
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The Unreal and the Real
- Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Volume One: Where on Earth
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 100
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 84
The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories--as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself--the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world, from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Shame on you, Audible
- By Audrey McCombs on 07-03-20
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors
- By: Nayomi Munaweera
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
-
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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The Essex Serpent
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,136
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,030
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,030
When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Unbearable Narrator
- By ACB on 06-08-17
By: Sarah Perry
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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
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 96
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 80
-
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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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 256
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 66
Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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5 out of 5 stars
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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The Ninth Rain
- The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Jen Williams
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 207
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 181
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 181
Jen Williams, acclaimed author of The Copper Cat trilogy, featuring The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, returns with the first in a blistering new trilogy. The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Couldn’t put it down!
- By Renae on 09-09-22
By: Jen Williams
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
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
-
Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
-
She Walks in Beauty
- A Woman's Journey Through Poems
- By: Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, and others
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd, Campbell Scott, Jane Alexander, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 84
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 63
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 58
She Walks in Beauty draws on poetry’s eloquent wisdom to ponder the many joys and challenges of being a woman. Caroline Kennedy has divided the collection into sections that signify to her the most notable milestones, passages, and universal experiences in a woman’s life, and she begins each of these sections with an introduction in which she explores and celebrates the most important elements of life’s journey.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Still struggling with poetry
- By Beatrice on 01-30-12
By: Adrienne Rich, and others
-
Ada, or Ardor
- A Family Chronicle
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 168
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 146
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 147
Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incest, a game the Whole Family Can Play
- By Darwin8u on 08-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Good Poems
- Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
- By: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and others
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 203
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 164
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Very good, but. . .
- By KSmith on 01-27-11
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
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Candid and beautiful
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In the 1950s, Vishnu Bhushan is a young boy yet to learn the truth beyond the rumors of his family's fractured histories - an alliance, as his mother says, of two bankrupt families. In evocative chapters, the first two decades of Vishnu's life in Mauritius unfolds with heart wrenching closeness as he battles to experience the world beyond, and the cultural, political, and familial turmoil that hold on to him.
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- By: Aimee Bender
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Alex McKenna, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story4 out of 5 stars 7
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely, Weird. Need More!
- By Erica Shanks on 03-05-24
By: Aimee Bender
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Between Two Moons
- A Novel
- By: Aisha Abdel Gawad
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar Young
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Story4 out of 5 stars 15
It’s the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents’ roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, whose mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the very few books i would give a 5 star .
- By Mystic Madness on 09-02-23
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A Map for the Missing
- A Novel
- By: Belinda Huijuan Tang
- Narrated by: Austin Ku
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
Tang Yitian has been living in America, estranged from his family, for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family’s rural village in China. When Yitian returns home and attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate the country’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider. So he seeks out a childhood friend: Tian Hanwen, who as a teenager was “sent down” from Shanghai to Yitian’s village as part of China’s rustication campaign.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful story, distractingly poor narration
- By Pen Name on 09-21-22
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Gertrude and Claudius
- A Novel
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 7
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7
Gertrude and Claudius are the "villains" of Hamlet: he the killer of Hamlet’s father and usurper of the Danish throne; she his lusty consort, who marries Claudius before her late husband’s body is cold. But in this imaginative "prequel" to the play, John Updike makes a case for the royal couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude and Claudius are seen afresh against a background of fond intentions and family dysfunction, on a stage darkened by the ominous shadow of a sullen, erratic, disaffected prince.
By: John Updike
What listeners say about Medusa's Ankles
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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Story4 out of 5 stars
- galatea
- 03-16-23
Beautiful writing! Sensitive Reading!
I loved every story in this collection of short stories by AS Byatt. All share several common threads: plot surprises, an intelligent and loving eye, and a veritable feast of verbal delights. What pleasure abounds in her fiction!
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