A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Sneha Mathan
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By:
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Dina Nayeri
About this listen
Spellbinding in its narration, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is the story of an Iranian girl who, separated from her mother and twin sister during the turmoil following the Iranian Revolution, invents a rich, imaginative world in which they live.
Growing up in a small fishing village in 1980s Iran, 11-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are fascinated by America. They keep lists of English vocabulary words and collect contraband copies of Life magazine and Beatles cassettes. So when Saba suddenly finds herself abandoned, alone with her father in Iran, she is certain that her mother and sister have moved to America without her. Bereft, she aches for their company, and for the Western life she believes she is being denied. All her life she had been taught that "fate is in the blood", which must mean that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea.
Thus, over the next several years, as Saba falls in and out of love and struggles with the limited possibilities available to her as a woman in Iran, she imagines a simultaneous, parallel life, a Western version, for her sister. But where Saba's story has all the grit and brutality of real life in postrevolutionary Iran, her sister's life - as Saba envisions it - gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.
Filled with a colorful cast of characters, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is told in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with straightforward Western prose and tells a story about the importance of controlling your own fate.
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Mahmoud’s passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness.
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Good story. Poor ending
- By Janine on 01-14-22
By: Nadia Hashimi
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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The Space Between Us
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
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A Story that stays with you
- By gardener97 on 04-25-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
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Diamond Head
- A Novel
- By: Cecily Wong
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Samantha Chen, Angela Lin, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
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- By Gina on 09-06-15
By: Cecily Wong
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
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Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The World We Found
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author and PEN and Beyond Margins Award finalist Thrity Umrigar’s acclaimed novels “resonate with rich prose and vibrant depictions of India” ( Booklist). In The World We Found, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta - once friends at the University of Bombay - reconnect 30 years later when Armaiti is diagnosed with cancer. Coming together, all four women are forced to reexamine their lives.
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Good story but performance not so much!
- By Alisha on 09-13-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
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Secret Daughter
- By: Shilpi Somaya Gowda
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Debut novelist Shilpi Somaya Gowda pens this compelling tale about two families, worlds apart, linked by one Indian child. After giving birth to a girl for a second time, impoverished Kavita must give her up to an orphanage. The baby, named Asha, is adopted by an American doctor and raised in California. But once grown, Asha decides to return to India.
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A Must Read
- By Stephanie on 06-08-11
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Veil of Roses
- By: Laura Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Tamila Soroush wanted it all. But in the Islamic Republic of Iran, dreams are a dangerous thing for a girl. Tami abandons them…until her twenty-seventh birthday, when her parents give her a one-way ticket to America, hoping she will “go and wake up her luck.” If they have their way, Tami will never return to Iran…which means she has three months to find a husband in America.
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Rooting for freedom
- By Newman on 07-10-13
By: Laura Fitzgerald
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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Modern Girls
- By: Jennifer S. Brown
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate: unwed, unsure, and running out of options.
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Super annoying voiceover
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-17
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
What listeners say about A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R. Renee Richardson
- 07-30-19
Captivating
It is a beautiful story coming of age story and interesting to hear about growing up in an Iranian village. Loved it in audio format because I would have difficulty trying figure out the pronunciation of names and vocabulary.
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- MissSusie66
- 03-21-13
great narration!
When Saba is 11 years old she remembers her twin sister Mahtab and her mother getting on a plane to America and leaving her and her father in Iran…This is what she remembers but is this what happened?
I felt Saba was an unreliable narrator she makes up this whole life for her twin sister Mahtab and her mother they go to America and she has this free American life and goes to Harvard and becomes a journalist which is Saba’s dream. As a reader you will have an inkling in the back of your head as to what really happened where they really are but until it is actually revealed you want to believe Saba. Also the reveal for me wasn’t what I expected but I don’t want to say too much more about that!
Saba is not always likable but yet you feel for her. Saba always felt like she was missing out so she made up these wondrous stories of what her sister was accomplishing in the US even though she had a pretty normal upbringing considering it is Iran in the 80’s it isn’t till she is older ,well marrying age, that this doesn’t quite hold true anymore. I kind of felt bad for her father at times, I felt like she treated him like a second class citizen when he was all she had and was trying his best, and I was glad to see that as she got older she realized this.
This is a really good story though at times a little hard to follow, it was nice to read a story about Iran that didn’t have so much violence , yes there is some but it comes from something/someone different than you will expect it to. This is the story of a family and a young girl’s life without her twin and mother and how that affects her entire life and who she becomes.
Sneha Mathan narration is well done her accent is not to strong; I think it's just the right amount to convey they are in Iran. She has a great voice and I thought she really helped convey the emotions of everyone she narrated. This was my first book narrated by Sneha Mathan but I don’t think it will be my last as I really enjoyed her voice.
4 Stars
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4 people found this helpful
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- Daryl
- 05-01-14
How many teaspoons...?
What did you like best about this story?
I enjoyed the shifting back and forth between Sabba's and her sister's imagined life in the USA. You know that she is imagining these things to cope with... well, with what?... but the stories are so gripping and paralleled that you can't look away.
Which character – as performed by Sneha Mathan – was your favorite?
Sabba. She acts so strong, and then realizes her actions are those of someone weak - a trait she can't abide in others.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Life after Revolution.
Any additional comments?
This book is primarily told in the third person... but there are portions that are first person - Hanom Basir, Dr. Zore. Sneha Mathan is a talented narrator, but there are others who could or should have narrated these parts.
This is a book that should be swallowed in teaspoons. There are portions of brutal violence, double-talk, cruelty, hope, love... to read it at one sitting is a disservice to this talented author.
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- Carol
- 05-02-23
Must Read
Such a good story. The audio book is beautifully narrated. Highly recommend. I enjoyed it immensely.
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- Nicarmel
- 11-21-16
Engaging, well-crafted story
The characters were brought to life in this story and were excellent vehicles to convey the rich culture and landscape and life in Iran.
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