The Mimic Men
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The Mimic Men
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Narrated by:
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Sam Dastor
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By:
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V. S. Naipaul
About this listen
Former government minister Ralph Singh is the perpetual outsider: displaced, disillusioned, and now living in exile, Ralph reflects on his earlier life and the searing effects of colonialism. Ralph's constant estrangement sees him ever attempting to fit into various communities, only to find home in more transient spaces. Born on the tropical island of Isabella, he is one of West India's many "Mimic Men".
Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul's sixth novel is a brutal and perceptive commentary on the postcolonial condition of the colonial man.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©1967 V. S. Naipaul (P)2017 Naxos AudioBooksListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 183
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible pronunciation
- By K. Jaynes on 02-25-18
By: Orhan Pamuk
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A House for Mr. Biswas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 335
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 284
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Story4 out of 5 stars 284
A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
- By Christopher on 01-04-19
By: V. S. Naipaul
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The Girls of Slender Means
- By: Muriel Spark
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 239
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 200
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Story4 out of 5 stars 202
"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions." Thus begins Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club building itself - "three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit" - its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal, practicing elocution and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown.
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2 out of 5 stars
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please please try again
- By Consolation on 03-24-20
By: Muriel Spark
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- By: Muriel Spark
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 362
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Story4 out of 5 stars 278
In the classic work that launched a play, a movie, and a song, Muriel Spark tells the darkly intriguing story of an eccentric Edinburgh teacher and the intense relationship she develops with six of her students. The scandalously outspoken Miss Brodie makes big waves in the conservative Scottish school, preaching the value of art, passion, and daring.
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5 out of 5 stars
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creme de la creme
- By Kathleen on 01-04-08
By: Muriel Spark
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4 out of 5 stars 125
Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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Labyrinths
- Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 31
Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Carl plays center stage
- By Sparrowhawk on 12-23-16
By: Catrine Clay
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The Magus
- By: John Fowles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 914
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 805
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Story4 out of 5 stars 814
John Fowles’s The Magus was a literary landmark of the 1960s. Nicholas Urfe goes to a Greek island to teach at a private school and becomes enmeshed in curious happenings at the home of a mysterious Greek recluse, Maurice Conchis. Are these events, involving attractive young English sisters, just psychological games, or an elaborate joke, or more? Reality shifts as the story unfolds. The Magus reflected the issues of the 1960s perfectly, and it continues to create tension and concern today.
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4 out of 5 stars
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One of the best novels that I really think I hate.
- By Darwin8u on 01-29-14
By: John Fowles
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Time Pieces
- A Dublin Memoir
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.
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5 out of 5 stars
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‘loved it!
- By SandyK on 02-24-24
By: John Banville
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In the Light of What We Know
- By: Zia Haider Rahman
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 82
One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.
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1 out of 5 stars
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dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
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Speak
- A Novel
- By: Louisa Hall
- Narrated by: Suzan Crowley, Christopher Ashman, Adrienne Rusk, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4 out of 5 stars 84
In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th century to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human and what it means to be less than fully alive.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Like nothing else
- By Anonymous User on 06-22-17
By: Louisa Hall
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The Moor's Last Sigh
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The performance is enchanting.
- By Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 998
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 888
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 889
When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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The Satanic Verses
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,917
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,662
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,652
Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
- By David Edelberg on 11-24-12
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Island
- By: Victoria Hislop
- Narrated by: Emma Powell
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story5 out of 5 stars 82
On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding plans a trip to her mother's childhood home in Plaka, Greece hoping to unravel Sofia's hidden past. Given a letter to take to Sofia's old friend, Fotini, Alexis is promised that through Fotini, she will learn more. Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone's throw from the deserted island of Spinalonga—Greece's former leper colony. Fotini reveals the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters, and a family rent by tragedy, war, and passion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Will listen to it again someday
- By RN on 01-07-23
By: Victoria Hislop