The Shape of the Ruins
A Novel
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The Shape of the Ruins
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Narrated by:
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Sheldon Romero
About this listen
Shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize
A sweeping tale of conspiracy theories, assassinations, and twisted obsessions - the much anticipated masterpiece from Juan Gabriel Vásquez.
The Shape of the Ruins is a masterly story of conspiracy, political obsession, and literary investigation. When a man is arrested at a museum for attempting to steal the bullet-ridden suit of a murdered Colombian politician, few notice. But soon this thwarted theft takes on greater meaning as it becomes a thread in a widening web of popular fixations with conspiracy theories, assassinations, and historical secrets; and it haunts those who feel that only they know the real truth behind these killings.
This novel explores the darkest moments of a country's past and brings to life the ways in which past violence shapes our present lives. A compulsive read, beautiful and profound, eerily relevant to our times and deeply personal, The Shape of the Ruins is a tour-de-force story by a master at uncovering the incisive wounds of our memories.
©2018 Juan Gabriel Vasquez (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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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Distant Star
- By: Roberto Bolano
- Narrated by: Walter Krochmal
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Omg
- By Sierra on 08-03-16
By: Roberto Bolano
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HHhH
- By: Laurent Binet
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 224
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 196
HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible-until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service-killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Himlers Hirn heisst Heydrich
- By Darwin8u on 02-02-13
By: Laurent Binet
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The Meursault Investigation
- By: Kamel Daoud, John Cullen - translator
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 162
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 164
He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus' classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: He gives his brother a story and a name - Musa - and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An enthralling double feature!
- By Kaui on 06-28-16
By: Kamel Daoud, and others
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Montalbano’s First Case and Other Stories
- The Inspector Montalbano, Book 0.5
- By: Andrea Camilleri
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 17 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 242
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 221
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 217
In Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories, Andrea Camilleri has selected 21 short stories, written with his trademark wit and humor, that follow Italy's famous detective through highlight cases of his career. From the title story, featuring a young Deputy Montalbano newly assigned to Vigàta, to "Montalbano Says No", in which the inspector makes a late-night call to Camilleri himself to refuse an outlandish case, this volume is an essential addition to any fan's collection and a wonderful way to introduce listeners to the internationally best-selling series.
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5 out of 5 stars
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THIS BOOK NEEDS TO BE LISTENED TO FIRST!!!
- By Reba on 12-31-16
By: Andrea Camilleri
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Death at La Fenice
- Commissario Brunetti Mysteries, Book 1
- By: Donna Leon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 696
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 621
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 615
During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned—and suspects abound. Guido Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder. To do so, he calls on his knowledge of Venice, its culture, and its dirty politics. Along the way, he finds the crime may have roots going back decades—and that revenge, corruption, and even Italian cuisine may play a role.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hercule Poirot in Venice...!!!
- By Emil Grancagnolo on 10-09-22
By: Donna Leon
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The Shadow District
- By: Arnaldur Indridason
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 673
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 607
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Story4 out of 5 stars 608
A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk, the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in "the shadow district", a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now?
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5 out of 5 stars
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A slow burn!
- By Rosemary Wells on 12-12-17
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The Red-Haired Woman
- A Novel
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee, Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 76
On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Drags On
- By T. Conrad on 10-25-17
By: Orhan Pamuk
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The Italian Secretary
- By: Caleb Carr
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 583
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 310
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 308
The best-selling author of the Alienist series returns with a chilling elaboration on the Sherlock Holmes canon, as the famed detective investigates a pair of gruesome murders, which cast an otherworldly shadow as far as Queen Victoria herself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A True Delight for the Holmes Enthusiast
- By Sagar on 06-03-05
By: Caleb Carr
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In the First Circle
- By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harry T. Willets - translator
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 31 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 564
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 493
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 491
Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949. The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state - or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps, and almost certain death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
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The Seventh Function of Language
- By: Laurent Binet, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4 out of 5 stars 100
Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies - struck by a laundry van - after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn't an accident at all? What if Barthes was murdered?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding reader! Excellent choice of victim(s).
- By William on 11-01-17
By: Laurent Binet, and others
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The House of Silk
- A Sherlock Holmes Novel
- By: Anthony Horowitz
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,610
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,122
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,117
Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective in literary history. For the first time since the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a new Holmes story has been sanctioned by his estate, whetting the appetites of fans everywhere. Information about the book will be revealed as deliberately as Holmes himself would unravel a knotty case, but bestselling novelist and Holmes expert Anthony Horowitz is sure to bring a compelling, atmospheric story to life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A disapointment
- By GP on 05-05-12
By: Anthony Horowitz
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Rosewater - Previously Published as 'Then They Came For Me’
- By: Maziar Bahari, Aimee Molloy
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 230
When Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential election, he assured his pregnant fiancée, Paola, that he'd be back in just a few days, a week at most. Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran’s most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Book that would've shined but for the narration
- By loix on 06-24-11
By: Maziar Bahari, and others
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The Shadow Killer
- By: Arnaldur Indridason
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4 out of 5 stars 123
Reykjavik, August 1941. When a travelling sales rep is found murdered in a Reykjavik flat, killed by a bullet from a Colt 45, the police initially suspect a member of the Allied occupation force. The British are in the process of handing over to the Americans, and the streets of Reykjavik are crawling with servicemen whose relations with the local women are a major cause for concern. Flovent, Reykjavik's sole detective, is joined by the young military policeman Thorson, the son of Icelandic emigrants to Canada.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Tawdry, depressing, and unsatisfying
- By Gail N. on 11-26-18
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Eichmann in My Hands
- A First-Person Account by the Israeli Agent Who Captured Hitler's Chief Executioner
- By: Peter Z. Malkin, Harry Stein
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story5 out of 5 stars 73
In 1960 Argentina, a covert team of Israeli agents hunted down the most elusive war criminal alive: Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust. The young spy who tackled Eichmann on a Buenos Aires street - and fought every compulsion to strangle the Obersturmführer then and there - was Peter Z. Malkin. For decades Malkin's identity as Eichmann's captor was kept secret. Here he reveals the entire breathtaking story - from the genesis of the top-secret surveillance operation to the dramatic public capture and smuggling of Eichmann to Israel to stand trial.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent the first person account
- By Barrett Francescatti on 02-09-22
By: Peter Z. Malkin, and others
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 893
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 787
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 786
The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 647
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 572
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 567
Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The position of the feet during reading...
- By literate rose on 02-09-18
By: Italo Calvino
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Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
What listeners say about The Shape of the Ruins
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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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Claudia Vilardy
- 11-18-24
fun and interesting journey through Colombian conspiracies
As a bilingual Colombian; this was a fun and interesting journey through some important and key moments of Colombian history and the multitude of unanswered questions surrounding the plague of corruption and violence that have persisted through time.
Having said that, I am deeply disappointed that they did not find someone bilingual enough to properly pronounce the Spanish words and street names as it really takes away from the narrative and, in an unexpected way, the identity of the places and people they describe.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- James McKee
- 11-13-23
Great book!
Fascinating reflection on Colombian history---and eerily relevant to today's USA. Up there with DeLillo's Libra.
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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
- Chris
- 04-25-20
Great Book
I highly recommend this book. In addition to being eye opening it's filled with gems
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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
- Amazon Customer
- 12-25-22
Epic and Brilliant
A book about the creation of a book. A detailed history of Uribe and Gaitan and Colombia, ripe with imaginations and conspiracy theories. A book whose nooks and twists make if almost impossible to describe, bug what a pleasure to hear or read. Challenging. Extraordinary. The reading is first rate.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Radhakrishna Bettadapura
- 11-17-18
Uncanny valley between fiction and non
And doesn't work as either. Some effective moments, like the one in the hospital. A deep sense of history.
Narrative isn't so well managed. Uribe Uribe turns up somewhere in the middle and somehow becomes the subject, in a protracted interlude that really belongs in another novel. The main thread resumes only to fizzle out.
Performance is okay. Some speech defects here and there. Inflections don't change between characters, making dialogue often difficult to follow.
Overall, needs some workshopping to fix.
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4 people found this helpful