Paradise
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Paradise
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Narrated by:
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Chukwudi Iwuji
About this listen
From the Nobel Prize winner, a coming-of-age story that illuminates the harshness and beauty of an Africa on the brink of colonization
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough” work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boy’s coming-of-age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of African tradition by European colonialism.
Sold by his father in repayment of a debt, twelve-year-old Yusuf is thrown from his simple rural life into complexities of pre-colonial urban East Africa. Through Yusuf’s eyes, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence. The result is what Publishers Weekly calls a “vibrant” and “powerful” work that “evokes the Edenic natural beauty of a continent on the verge of full-scale imperialist takeover.”
©2023 Abdulrazak Gurnah (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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More Relevant Today than Ever
- By Robert on 07-29-13
By: Pearl S. Buck
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Siddhartha
- By: Hermann Hesse
- Narrated by: Harish Bhimani
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 196
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
Hermann Hesse’s classic novel Siddhartha, takes place in ancient India around the time of the Buddha (6th century BC). Siddhartha and his companion Govinda set out in search of enlightenment. Siddhartha goes through a series of changes and realizations as he attempts to achieve this goal. Siddhartha joins the ascetics, visits Gotama, embraces his earthly desires, and finally communes with nature, all in an attempt to attain Nirvana.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sounds rushed
- By Viviane on 10-17-11
By: Hermann Hesse
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The Book of Longings
- A Novel
- By: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò, Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,908
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,139
In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Made me cringe
- By Joan on 05-08-20
By: Sue Monk Kidd
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Shadow of the Moon
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Tara Ochs
- Length: 34 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 351
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 306
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 306
The author of The Far Pavilions returns us once again to the vast, intoxicating romance of India under the British Raj. Shadow of the Moon is the story of Winter de Ballesteros, a beautiful English heiress come home to her beloved India. It is also the tale of Captain Alex Randall, her protector, who aches to possess her. Forged in the fires of a war that threatens to topple an empire, their tale is the saga of a desperate and unforgettable love that consumes all in its thrall.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Has always been a great story.
- By Sian on 06-08-14
By: M. M. Kaye
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The Good Earth
- By: Pearl S. Buck
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7,079
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,617
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,629
This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow
- By Ryan on 05-08-10
By: Pearl S. Buck
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Siddhartha
- By: Herman Hesse, Paul Ansdell - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Ansdell
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 102
Siddhartha, the ninth book written by Herman Hesse, is about a young Indian boy who leaves his home in hopes of finding enlightenment with the wise "Goutama", which in this story is the Buddha. After learning what he can from Goutama, he decides to go off into the busy city, and leads a life of greed and lust. When he realizes that the lifestyle is not fulfilling, and he reflects on his life, he goes to a river and contemplates suicide.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful writing and narration.
- By John Kurtz on 06-13-17
By: Herman Hesse, and others
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Siddhartha
- By: Hermann Hesse, Gunther Olesch - translator, Anke Dreher - translator, and others
- Narrated by: David Cross
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 428
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 374
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 373
In Siddhartha, Herman Hesse conveys a very profound message for all those who seek meaning in their lives. Though set in India, the concerns of Siddhartha are universal, expressing Hesse's general interest in the conflict between mind, body, and spirit. It is a story of a Brahmin boy who follows his heart and ventures out into the world to experience life as a pious Brahmin, a Samana, a rich merchant, a lover, and ordinary ferryman to a father - each life bringing a new awakening, bringing him closer to the truth until he is finally one with Buddha.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not THAT David Cross
- By OrangeCounty on 02-09-18
By: Hermann Hesse, and others
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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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Annie Dunne
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 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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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15
It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Splendid
- By Shady on 06-21-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
- By: Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 6,273
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,489
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5,491
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.
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1 out of 5 stars
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What in the heck happened?????
- By Melinda on 02-05-14
By: Gabriel García Márquez, and others
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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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Asura
- Tale of the Vanquished: The Story of Ravana and His People
- By: Anand Neelakantan
- Narrated by: Denzil Smith
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
The story of the Ramayana had been told innumerable times. The enthralling story of Rama, the incarnation of God, who slew Ravana, the evil demon of darkness, is known to every Indian. And in the pages of history, as always, it is the version told by the victors that lives on. The voice of the vanquished remains lost in silence. But what if Ravana and his people had a different story to tell? The story of the Ravanayana had never been told. Asura is the epic tale of the vanquished Asura people, a story that has been cherished by the oppressed outcastes of India for 3,000 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Makes you thinks about everything
- By Anonymous User on 12-04-23
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Exile and the Kingdom
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So good!
- By Christopher A. Douglas on 10-24-24
By: Albert Camus
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A Suitable Boy (Dramatised)
- By: Vikram Seth
- Narrated by: Ayesha Dharker, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 348
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 284
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Story4 out of 5 stars 278
A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.
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2 out of 5 stars
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would prefer unabridged naration
- By Tamshine on 07-07-11
By: Vikram Seth
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Birds Without Wings
- By: Louis de Bernieres
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 501
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 317
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 315
Birds Without Wings is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women (Armenians, Christians, and Muslims) whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness; and many more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not for the faint of heart
- By a on 01-03-05
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Welcome to Night Vale
- A Novel
- By: Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
- Narrated by: Cecil Baldwin, Dylan Marron, Retta, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6,838
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,350
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,342
Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.
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4 out of 5 stars
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This is so good, but
- By Christopher on 04-30-16
By: Joseph Fink, and others
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Cry, the Beloved Country
- By: Alan Paton
- Narrated by: Michael York
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,445
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,924
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,915
This is the most distinguished novel that has come out of South Africa in the 20th century, and it is one of the most important novels of the modern era. Cry, the Beloved Country is in some ways a sad book; it is an indictment of a social system that drives native races into resentment and crime; it is a story of Fate, as inevitable, as relentless, as anything of Thomas Hardy's. Beautifully wrought with high poetic compassion, Cry, the Beloved Country is more than just a story, it is a profound experience of the human spirit.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A word painting: gripping, breathtaking & moving
- By Jacobus on 10-04-12
By: Alan Paton
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5 out of 5 stars
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Jolene and Verna share complicated ties that have crystallized over time. Beginning when they were girls discovering their needs and desires, their ongoing stories have been inextricably linked. But when Verna marries Vincent, Jolene’s ex-husband, their paths may have finally, permanently diverged.
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Spanning more than 150 years, and set in multiple locations in colonial and postcolonial Asia and the United States, Inheritors paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of its characters as they grapple with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war. Written from myriad perspectives and in a wide range of styles, each of these interconnected stories is designed to speak to the others, contesting assumptions and illuminating the complicated ways we experience, interpret, and pass on our personal and shared histories.
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5 out of 5 stars
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moving, deep, expansive
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Faith ultimately bursts into flame as Updike's major new novel, charting the lives of one family through four generations, shows listeners an America whose dream of perfection is translated into an obsession with God and the moving picture. Paterson, New Jersey, 1910: When a Presbyterian minister suddenly loses his faith and leaves the pulpit to become a salesman, he becomes a movie addict as well.
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In the Beauty of the Lillies
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On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession—a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, silence his only protection.
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beautifully written and read
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Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime.
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Intriguingly Unusual
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 12
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 12
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In this powerful and virtuosic collection of interlocking stories, Peter Orner, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, takes the short story to new heights. Through 44 compressed gems, Peter Orner chronicles people whose lives are at inflection points, gripping us with a series of defining moments.
By: Peter Orner
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Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Vivid, vibrant, and unwaveringly affecting, The Best Possible Experience brings us intimate, impeccably realized accounts of individuals living in one of the most populous countries in the world, and its American diaspora, all haunted, in every sense of the word, by a loss of home. Classically elegant in prose and consistently modern in outlook, Injam’s stories question what it means to have a home, to return home, and show, above all, that home is not a place so much as a people ready to accept you as you are.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent writing and reading
- By customer on 09-03-23
By: Nishanth Injam
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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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Medusa's Ankles
- Selected Stories
- By: A. S. Byatt, David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Esther Wane, Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 7
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful writing! Sensitive Reading!
- By galatea on 03-16-23
By: A. S. Byatt, and others
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Build Your House Around My Body
- A Novel
- By: Violet Kupersmith
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 165
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 141
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Story4 out of 5 stars 142
Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Epic, Horrifying & Mystical
- By Jonathan T. Jefferson on 07-20-21
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Walking on the Ceiling
- A Novel
- By: Aysegül Savas
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4 out of 5 stars 27
After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic book!
- By cemal on 06-09-19
By: Aysegül Savas
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The Bad Muslim Discount
- A Novel
- By: Syed M. Masood
- Narrated by: Pej Vahdat, Hend Ayoub
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 514
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 463
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 461
It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A great well developed story.
- By SBB on 02-11-21
By: Syed M. Masood
What listeners say about Paradise
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
- albita
- 11-15-23
Interesting
I’m part of a book club and this book was suggested to me. I really like it. The detail story takes you all the way to Tanzania and let you explore and live there showing you that culture and history. Excellent sound and voice.
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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
- Nzingha
- 03-08-24
East African pre-colonual history from the inside out
Several European countries plus Greek, Indian & Arabs traders all plot to steal the riches of the country that becomes Tranzania. Gurnah is a skillful writer who when he describes a terrible oder, you smell it. When he describes a beautiful scenic settings, you can see it. Paradise is both paradise and hell simultaneously. This is one beautiful and distribing read, will worth your time and effort.
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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
- Pamela J Blair
- 03-22-24
Beautiful book
Gurnah’s writing is superb. His description of the caravan and where it went was so realistic I felt I was on the journey. The end was sad and hopeful at the same time.
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