The Backstreets
A Novel from Xinjiang
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The Backstreets
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Narrated by:
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Fajer Al-Kaisi
About this listen
The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odors, lust and loathing, memories and madness.
Perhat Tursun's novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun's own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization, and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist's vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator's introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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We
- By: Yevgeny Zamyatin
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,179
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,046
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,046
Set in the 26th century A.D., Yevgeny Zamyatin's masterpiece describes life under the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful "Benefactor." Recognized as the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia: a great prose poem detailing the fate that might befall us all if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting history, prose a little outdated
- By Joel D Offenberg on 11-30-11
By: Yevgeny Zamyatin
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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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Dead Bad Things
- A Thomas Usher Novel
- By: Gary McMahon
- Narrated by: Jay Villiers
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 426
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 395
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Story4 out of 5 stars 394
He sought to flee his tragic past, but when Thomas Usher hears a clockwork voice on the phone, and sees ever-more disturbing visions in a derelict warehouse, Usher realises that he has to return home - for the sake of his own sanity. Meanwhile, a deadly figure from Usher's past threatens to undermine the very fabric of reality. Gary McMahon’s short fiction has appeared in numerous acclaimed magazines and anthologies in the UK and US and has been reprinted in yearly “Best of” collections.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story, great reader
- By Anonymous User on 12-09-20
By: Gary McMahon
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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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The Man Who Lived Underground
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Ethan Herisse
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 266
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 217
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Story4 out of 5 stars 216
Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city’s sewer system. This is the devastating premise of this scorching novel, a never-before-seen masterpiece by Richard Wright. Written at the height of his creative powers, it would see publication in Wright's lifetime only in drastically condensed and truncated form, and ultimately be included in the posthumous short story collection Eight Men.
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5 out of 5 stars
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If you enjoy the author Richard Wright...
- By Anonymous User on 05-25-21
By: Richard Wright
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Creatures of Passage
- By: Morowa Yejidé
- Narrated by: Morowa Yejidé
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, 10-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man".
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is the one
- By just_watching on 04-27-21
By: Morowa Yejidé
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American Elsewhere
- By: Robert Jackson Bennett
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 22 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 538
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 489
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Story4 out of 5 stars 489
Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....
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4 out of 5 stars
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You are entering the twighlight zone
- By Lisa on 07-29-13
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Amulet
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: Adriana Sananes
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
A tour de force, Amulet is a highly charged first-person, semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America. Amulet is a monologue, like Bolaño's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry", hanging out with the young poets in the cafés and bars of the University.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Read The Savage Detectives first
- By Alicia Grega on 12-05-13
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
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Mayhem
- By: Sarah Pinborough
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 117
A new killer is stalking the streets of London’s East End. Though newspapers have dubbed him 'the Torso Killer’, this murderer’s work is overshadowed by the hysteria surrounding Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel crimes. The victims are women too, but their dismembered bodies, wrapped in rags and tied up with string, are pulled out of the Thames - and the heads are missing….
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just Wow.
- By Sylvia on 03-04-14
By: Sarah Pinborough
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Trashlands
- By: Alison Stine
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 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
A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Trashlands
- By Richard W. Carlson on 01-10-23
By: Alison Stine
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The Heart
- By: Maylis de Kerangal, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4 out of 5 stars 44
The Heart takes place over the 24 hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow! What a story!
- By Jan on 02-27-20
By: Maylis de Kerangal, and others
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Hellboy: Odd Jobs
- By: Christopher Golden
- Narrated by: Seth Podowitz
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 118
In 1994, Mike Mignola created one of the most unique and visually arresting comics series to ever see print: Hellboy. Tens of thousands have followed the exploits of the World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator in comics form and in prose. Now, fans of the comic can enjoy the world of Hellboy as seen through the eyes of some of the brightest creative lights in horror and mystery fiction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Extra stories for true fans
- By Daniel Wiffen on 07-24-21
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The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 617
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 535
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Story4 out of 5 stars 530
Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
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The Gilda Stories
- By: Jewelle Gomez
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next 200 years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Critical and Timely Classic
- By Qasima Wideman on 08-09-19
By: Jewelle Gomez
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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
What listeners say about The Backstreets
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
- Sean
- 09-05-24
A Haunting Exploration of Alienation
The Backstreets by Perhat Tursun delves into the disorienting and bleak experiences of a young Uyghur man in Urumqi. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, it explores themes of alienation, identity, and systemic oppression as the protagonist navigates a city filled with hostility and social displacement. The introspective narrative often blurs the line between the protagonist’s internal turmoil and the harsh external reality. Tursun’s experimental style draws comparisons to literary giants like Kafka and Camus, and at times, it even evokes the complexity of Ulysses by James Joyce. The novel reflects both personal and collective struggles of the Uyghurs, offering a profound yet unsettling examination of life under oppression.
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