A Year in the World
Journeys of a Passionate Traveller
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Frances Mayes
About this listen
A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes, a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. An ideal travel companion, Frances Mayes brings to the page the curiosity of an intrepid explorer, remarkable insights into the wonder of the everyday, and a compelling narrative style that entertains as it informs.
With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, the South of Italy, and North Africa. In Andalucia, she relishes the intersection of cultures. She cooks in Portugal, gathers ideas in the gardens of England and Scotland, takes a literary pilgrimage to Burgundy, discovers an ideal place to live in Mantova, and explores the essential Moroccan city of Fez. She rents houses among ordinary residents, shops at neighborhood markets, wanders the back streets, and everywhere contemplates the concept of home. While in Greece, she follows the classic Homeric voyage across the Aegean, lives in a bougainvillea-draped stone house in Crete, and then drives deep into the Mani. In Turkey with friends, she sails the ancient coast, hiking to archaeological sites and snorkeling over sunken Byzantine towns.
Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape, and social and culinary traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader. An illuminating and passionate audiobook that will be savored by all who loved Under the Tuscan Sun, A Year in the World is travel writing at its peak.
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Winner - AudioFile Earphones Award, 2006
"Mayes' prose shines with evocative imagery, bringing life to every subject she encounters across her peripatetic year." (Booklist)
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After surviving the accident that took her mother's life, Claire Broussard worked hard to escape her small Louisiana hometown. But these days, she feels something lacking. Abruptly leaving her lucrative job in Chicago, Claire returns home to care for her ailing grandmother. There, she unearths a beautiful sculpture that her great-grandfather sent home from Paris after World War II. At her grandmother's urging, Claire travels to Paris to track down the centuries old mask-making atelier where the sculpture was created.
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love story, a mystery, a historical novel, or all
- By Bonnie on 11-15-16
By: Juliet Blackwell
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Habibi
- By: Naomi Shihab Nye
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For 14-year-old Liyana Abboud, life in St. Louis, Missouri is perfect. She loves shopping in the nearby stores and walking down streets where she knows everyone. Even better, she has just had her first kiss. But her father is moving the family to Jerusalem - the land where he was born. Suddenly Liyana finds herself a stranger in a threatening world.
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Very good Performance
- By Muhammad on 04-07-15
By: Naomi Shihab Nye
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A Year in Provence
- By: Peter Mayle
- Narrated by: Peter Mayle
- Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Peter Mayle and his wife had been to Provence as tourists. They had dreamed of one day trading the long, grey winters and damp summers of England for the blue skies and sunshine of the coast of southern France. And then they made it happen. They moved into an old farmhouse at the foot of the Luberon mountains and embarked on a wonderful, if at times bewildering, new life.
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Ban abridged versions
- By marlowe on 03-30-15
By: Peter Mayle
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Almost French
- By: Sarah Turnbull
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After backpacking her way around Europe journalist Sarah Turnbull is ready to embark on one last adventure before heading home to Sydney. A chance meeting with a charming Frenchman in Bucharest changes her travel plans forever. Acting on impulse, she agrees to visit Fredric in Paris for a week. Put a very French Frenchman together with a strong-willed Australian girl and the result is some spectacular - and often hilarious - cultural clashes.
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Almost Terrific
- By Elizabeth on 02-05-13
By: Sarah Turnbull
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Full Circle
- A Pacific Journey with Michael Palin
- By: Michael Palin
- Narrated by: Michael Palin
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.
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Excellent, per usual
- By Enroute8 on 06-03-07
By: Michael Palin
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Beautiful Animals
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.
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please offer more of this author's books
- By S. Liskey on 07-20-17
By: Lawrence Osborne
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Come to the Edge
- A Memoir
- By: Christina Haag
- Narrated by: Christina Haag
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Christina Haag was growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was just one of the boys in her circle of prep-school friends. A decade later, after they had both graduated from Brown University and were living in New York City, Christina and John were cast in an off-Broadway play together. It was then that John confessed his long-standing crush on her, and they embarked on a five-year love affair.
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Thoroughly enjoyed Come to the Edge
- By CapeCodLady on 11-15-19
By: Christina Haag
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A Russian Journal
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Steinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune.
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Extremely Interesting
- By Jean on 12-04-14
By: John Steinbeck
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Lunch in Paris
- A Love Story, with Recipes
- By: Elizabeth Bard
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman - and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pavé au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce? Lunch in Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs - one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine.
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ok to pass the time
- By Robin on 03-25-13
By: Elizabeth Bard
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Good start, but ended up not liking the author
- By Giselle on 11-02-21
By: Kapka Kassabova
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What listeners say about A Year in the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Sonia
- 10-30-06
Enjoyable escape (mostly)
Overall, this book is quite a nice way to escape to Italy, Spain, Portugal, UK, Morocco, etc. for a few hours. The narrator is good -- immeasurably better than the author (who narrates her other books - disasterously). The prose is simple and the author does a good job of illustrating scenes in lovely places, with the occasional and very awkward attempt to insert something "deep" or personal that just ends up sounding off. Overall a nice, light listen -- probably better than reading the book.
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19 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Julie
- 02-15-11
On and on and on and on....
I should have listened to the other reviewers but I was so excited to have a nice long travel book to be immersed in. Well, 4 chapters in I feel I'm drowning in never ending – albeit beautiful – travel rants. There seems to be no flow of start & finish to each chapter/story, just on and on and on. It *is* a beautiful book though.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Audy Davison
- 05-08-20
A Heady, sensual, beautiful tourist adventure
I would like to read more books like this. It is full of rich detail, exotic places, delicious food, wonderful buildings and views. An altogether lightness and jpy of being that is too rare. There is no danger, no suffering, no drama, just the pleasures of the senses, the experience of new places and ancient cultures and shopping and eating and making new friends and pleasnt dreams of newly discovered details of a forgein place. Just delectable.
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Overall
- Elizabeth
- 09-24-08
Disappointing
Having enjoyed Under the Tuscan Sun - and being a passionate traveler myself - I looked forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, it is so poor that I gave up halfway through - a rare occurrence. At its best, Mayes's writing can be lyrical and seductive, and there are flashes of that here. But there are also flashes of turgid, self-important, and precious prose. Most of it is just boring. I also realized partway through that there is virtually NO humor in this book.
For travel writing from now on, I'll stick with Bryson or Troost or Rob Gifford.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- C Jones
- 12-26-08
A Year In The World (Frances Mays)
I was so very disappointed in this book. It's a rambling, non-original and not well presented. It plods along in a manner that defies holding the interest of the reader. I read (heard) one of Frances Mays short stories about overseas travel and it was excellent - but it was a single short story and perhaps she should stick to that genre where there is a clear destination for the narrative (or even a focused snapshot). The content is weak - I do not know how this was published. I agree with a prior reviewer - someone should stop this - I know I will never buy another of her books/stories and I LOVE travel books but this does not qualify as a narrative that leaves the reader with insights of the places traveled, The focus clearly on the writer not the subject.
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4 people found this helpful