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What Am I Doing Here?
- Narrated by: Hugh Fraser
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
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What Am I Doing Here?
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Publisher's summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
The audio edition of What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin.
In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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Sovietistan
- Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
- By: Erika Fatland
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story5 out of 5 stars 59
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world. Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the listener on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding book
- By George MP on 04-24-22
By: Erika Fatland
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What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- By: Carolyn Forché
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 329
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 290
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Story5 out of 5 stars 290
What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful story
- By Norhilda on 05-09-19
By: Carolyn Forché
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Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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Street Without a Name
- Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria
- By: Kapka Kassabova
- Narrated by: Emily Gray
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
Kassabova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and grew up under the drab, muddy, gray mantle of one of communism’s most mindlessly authoritarian regimes. Escaping with her family as soon as possible after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she lived in Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina, and several other places. But when Bulgaria was formally inducted to the European Union she decided it was time to return to the home she had spent most of her life trying to escape. What she found was a country languishing under the strain of transition. This two-part memoir of Kapka’s childhood and return explains life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good start, but ended up not liking the author
- By Giselle on 11-02-21
By: Kapka Kassabova
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The Innocents Abroad
- Or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,469
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,307
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,306
In June 1867, Mark Twain set out for Europe and the Holy Land on the paddle steamer Quaker City. His enduring, no-nonsense guide for the first-time traveler also served as an antidote to the insufferably romantic travel books of the period.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Twain's Hidden Gem
- By Cynthia Franks on 05-08-12
By: Mark Twain
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The Amur River
- Between Russia and China
- By: Colin Thubron
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the 10th longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles, it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Simmering with the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the most densely fortified frontier on Earth.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bleak
- By Amazon Customer on 11-03-21
By: Colin Thubron
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Balkan Ghosts
- A Journey Through History
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 294
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 250
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 251
From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Anti religious/anti catholic hit piece
- By Daniel Calvert on 05-04-21
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 574
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 380
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Story4 out of 5 stars 388
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
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Mukiwa
- A White Boy in Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 133
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story5 out of 5 stars 119
In unforgettable tales of innocence lost under African skies, we follow Godwin's awakening to the often savage struggle between Whites and Blacks, his horror when he is forced to fight in a civil war he detests, and his experiences as a journalist covering the country's violent transition to Black rule as Rhodesia's colonial era comes to an end and the new state of Zimbabwe is born from its bloody ashes. Mukiwa is a poignant, compelling memoir and an invaluable addition to the literature of southern Africa.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Captivating, poignant memoir.
- By Nakaale on 10-04-20
By: Peter Godwin
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My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,063
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 942
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Story4 out of 5 stars 935
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
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Nine Continents
- A Memoir In and Out of China
- By: Xiaolu Guo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.
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5 out of 5 stars
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must read
- By Jeff Darlington on 10-22-17
By: Xiaolu Guo
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Finding George Orwell in Burma
- By: Emma Larkin
- Narrated by: Emily Durante
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, she has come to know all too well the many ways this police state can be described as "Orwellian". The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. The connection between George Orwell and Burma is not simply metaphorical, of course; Orwell's mother was born in Burma, and he was shaped by his experiences there as a young man working for the British Imperial Police.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Orwell's Horrors Brought to Life
- By Roger on 09-21-10
By: Emma Larkin