When Magic Failed
A Memoir of a Lebanese Childhood, Caught Between East and West
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When Magic Failed
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Narrated by:
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Assaf Cohen
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By:
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Fouad Ajami
About this listen
From the author of The Arab Predicament and Dream Palace of the Arabs comes a beautiful and haunting memoir of growing up in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s - the story of a sensitive young man and budding intellectual caught between tradition and modernity, East and West.
As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami’s sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s. The time was a transitional one - not only for the Middle East but for America and the world. Lebanon in this era was just coming into its own as a cosmopolitan destination of the international jet set as well as earnest American educators seeking to modernize Arab society. The disruptive forces of the Middle East - the Cold War, the Palestinian conflict, religious extremism, the money and oil of the Gulf - were only just beginning to appear. In this haunting and beautifully written memoir of his Lebanese childhood, the late Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami casts a discerning light into the corners and alleyways of an Arab reality that would later erupt into full view.
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Fascinating
- By ayodele higgs on 01-27-16
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An American Bride in Kabul
- By: Phyllis Chesler PhD
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid - and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Exceptional Book
- By Elaine Fresco on 04-16-19
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The Last Jews of Kerala
- The Two Thousand Year History of India’s Forgotten Jewish Community
- By: Edna Fernandes
- Narrated by: Leslie Bellair
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
When a people die out, can their story survive?Two thousand years ago, trade routes and the fall of Jerusalem took Jewish settlers seeking sanctuary across Europe and Asia. One little-known group settled in Kerala, in tropical southwestern India. Eventually numbering in the thousands, with eight synagogues, they prospered. Some came to possess vast estates and plantations, and many enjoyed economic privilege and political influence.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting topic, unethical author, uninformed reader
- By Cameron Crane on 03-08-18
By: Edna Fernandes
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I Am a Bacha Posh
- My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan
- By: Ukmina Manoori, Stephanie Lebrun, Peter E. Chianchiano - translator
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 264
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 233
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 231
"You will be a son, my daughter." With these stunning words Ukmina learned that she was to spend her childhood as a boy. In Afghanistan there is a widespread practice of girls dressing as boys to play the role of a son. These children are called bacha posh: literally "girls dressed as boys." This practice offers families the freedom to allow their child to shop and work - and in some cases, it saves them from the disgrace of not having a male heir. But in adolescence, religion restores the natural law.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good story, awful pronunciation
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-21
By: Ukmina Manoori, and others
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The Home That Was Our Country
- By: Alia Malek
- Narrated by: Alia Malek
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parents' decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians—the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds—who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country
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5 out of 5 stars
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Syria as never read before
- By rami hachwi on 09-17-18
By: Alia Malek
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Inside the Kingdom
- My Life In Saudi Arabia
- By: Carmen bin Ladin
- Narrated by: Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 317
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
On September 11, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her daughters would never be the same again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An inside view of the Saudi women's life
- By Richard on 08-04-04
By: Carmen bin Ladin
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Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Marmee and Louisa
- The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
- By: Eve LaPlante
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hardworking women and the man they supported
- By Chris on 04-26-13
By: Eve LaPlante
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American Ghost
- A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 151
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Story4 out of 5 stars 130
The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A true American tale
- By Cleo Colorado on 05-29-15
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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House of Stone
- A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
- By: Anthony Shadid
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
When Anthony Shadid—one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya as the region erupted—was freed, he went home, not to Boston, Beirut, or Oklahoma, where he was raised by his Lebanese American family, but to an ancient estate built by his great-grandfather, a place filled with memories of a lost era when the Middle East was a world of grace, grandeur, and unexpected departures.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Bit depressing
- By Astrid Dahl on 03-17-12
By: Anthony Shadid
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Create Dangerously
- The Immigrant Artist at Work
- By: Edwidge Danticat
- Narrated by: Kristin Kalbli
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile. Inspired by Albert Camus and adapted from her own lectures for Princeton University’s Toni Morrison Lecture Series, here Danticat tells stories of artists who create despite (or because of) the horrors that drove them from their homelands. Combining memoir and essay, these moving and eloquent pieces examine what it means to be an artist from a country in crisis.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A very important book.
- By Tyler on 12-07-19
By: Edwidge Danticat
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The Banished Immortal
- A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)
- By: Ha Jin
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
In his own time (701-762), Li Bai's poems - shaped by Daoist thought and characterized by their passion, romance, and lust for life - were never given their proper due by the official literary gatekeepers. Nonetheless, his lines rang out on the lips of court entertainers, tavern singers, soldiers, and writers throughout the Tang dynasty. The Banished Immortal is an extraordinary portrait of a poet who both transcended his time and was shaped by it and whose ability to live, love, and mourn without reservation produced some of the most enduring verses.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bold and unstoppable, like an overflowing river
- By Joselo on 02-09-19
By: Ha Jin
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In an Antique Land
- History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
Once upon a time an Indian writer name Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some 700 years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with 20th-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Worlds
- By Roger on 10-26-10
By: Amitav Ghosh
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If the Oceans Were Ink
- An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran
- By: Carla Power
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power's eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship - between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh - had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names.
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2 out of 5 stars
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WAY TOO LONG-but good material
- By teri_novabern on 07-30-16
By: Carla Power
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The First Muslim
- The Story of Muhammad
- By: Lesley Hazleton
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
Muhammad's was a life of almost unparalleled historical importance, yet for all the iconic power of his name, the intensely dramatic story of the prophet of Islam is not well known. In The First Muslim, Lesley Hazleton brings him vibrantly to life. Drawing on early eyewitness sources and on history, politics, religion, and psychology, she renders him as a man in full, in all his complexity and vitality. Hazleton's account follows the arc of Muhammad's rise from powerlessness to power, from anonymity to renown.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Can't get past the narrator
- By Robert Horan on 06-18-17
By: Lesley Hazleton
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The Aquariums of Pyongyang
- By: Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 285
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 247
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Story5 out of 5 stars 248
Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education". Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Riveting!!
- By Iread on 11-12-20
By: Chol-hwan Kang, and others