An Unnecessary Woman
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
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By:
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Rabih Alameddine
About this listen
One of the Middle East's most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international best seller, The Hakawati, with an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, 72-year-old "unnecessary" woman.
Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's "unnecessary appendage." Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The 37 books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read by anyone.
In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, listeners follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.
A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the prodigiously gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East.
©2013 Rabih Alameddine. Recorded by arrangement with Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- 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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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 Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Wife
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Dawn Harvey
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
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A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
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The Distant Hours
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
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Right Mood At The Right Time
- By Simone on 11-13-12
By: Kate Morton
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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The Confessions of Max Tivoli
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Brian Keeler
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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odd premise, but it works!
- By Sean Dunnahoo on 03-03-04
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Freud's Mistress
- By: Karen Mack, Jennifer Kaufman
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sweeping tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal - between a husband and a wife, between sisters - fact and fiction seamlessly blend together, creating a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman and her struggle to reconcile her love for her sister with her obsessive desire for her sister's husband, the mythic father of psychoanalysis.
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What a Super Ego
- By Mel on 07-12-13
By: Karen Mack, and others
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Everything Is Illuminated
- By: Jonathan Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.
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Astounding reading
- By bookworm123abc on 02-10-23
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Russian Winter
- A Novel
- By: Daphne Kalotay
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In Russian Winter, the beautiful debut novel by critically acclaimed writer Daphne Kalotay, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalinist Russia. Called “tender, passionate, and moving” by Jenna Blum, the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us, Russian Winter is a perfect choice for fans of the novels of Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), and Ian McEwan (Atonement).
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Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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The Vagrants
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Jackie Chung
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.
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Lovely prose, good story, deadly narration
- By Athene on 05-10-13
By: Yiyun Li
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The Corpse Washer
- By: Sinan Antoon
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in defiance of his father's wishes and determined to forge his own path. But the circumstances of history dictate otherwise.
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Gorgeous story with talented narration
- By N. Barnes on 03-11-18
By: Sinan Antoon
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Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.
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Great book - aptly named
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In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps.
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One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change.
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A beautiful book
- By Vly Summit on 05-19-24
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In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except for harried undertakers, she buries her mother - the only family Adelaida has ever known. Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the window that she tapes shut every night - to prevent the tear gas raining down on protesters in the streets from seeping in. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beaten up. It is the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy.
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Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of 30 years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children.
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What listeners say about An Unnecessary Woman
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ActiveReader
- 01-15-17
Made me wish I'd read more in my past
Very soulful book, showing one woman's inner thoughts in depth. Nothing much actually happens in the book, but the delth of reflection on her life and how this connects to literature is interesting.
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- endoduo
- 10-31-15
Could be called " A Solitary and Self Fulfilling Woman"
A little slow and repetitive , but it may have been key to developing this unique woman.
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- Ctina
- 05-07-24
Love this book.
This was a fascinating book. I really enjoyed it. The Narrator was amazing. Highly recommend.
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- Light by the Moon
- 04-11-15
So refreshingly different
This made me feel like I was with a friend telling me a story. It was informative of the middle eastern conflict in the late 70's , early 80's. It was intellectual, artistic, humble, and down to earth all at once. So very good at painting a scene. So good at describing family drama. I learned a lot about history, family, human troubles, and so many other works of literature were mentioned. I miss it already.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Jen Hulme
- 01-31-15
A Necessary Read
I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did. You know how everyone has that one book they really connect with and they need to reread it every year or so? This is that book for me. It brought me so much joy and the narration beautifully expressed Alameddine's tale. This may actually be my most bookmarked audiobook just because of how many passages were wryly witty or laugh-out-loud humorous. Even through the heartbreaking sections, I loved every minute and became so emotionally invested. I cannot recommend this book enough.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Mon Dobrin
- 02-11-15
A romance, not with a man, but with books
I was hooked by the first few lines. The poetry of Alameddine, the tone and intellegence of her charactar pulled me in, as did her spirit.
Not much happens in this novel, but it was never meant to be a plot-driven novel. It's a romance, but her lover is books. She lives alone in her apartment, translating one book a year. Her prose caresses the works she loves, unflowery and lyrical. She tells of her life and treats the people in it as characters- since she is a translator, she has no control of the characters, nor does she want control. She lets life pass her, disinterested to all those except her books and those that threaten her solitude with them.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Cecilia Mills
- 09-27-15
Savor it
Whether you read this book quickly or slowly, as I did, savor it. The writing takes you to a place much in the news but from another perspective. For lovers of books.
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- Bridget Batch
- 05-19-22
Poetic, excessively literary, quietly lush
This is a very specific book, extremely literary and poetic. It starts out quite, quite slowly and builds slowly, towards a truly lovely ending. It is, much like a life.
There is much I related to in the narrator (character) - although at times I felt so done with her. I also truly felt I was in Beirut, which I enjoyed - it’s a city I really wish to visit.
The performance is quite good and it seems like the woman can really speak Arabic? I’m not sure but I enjoyed thinking it was true.
It’s a strange quiet story and I quite liked it.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Junel
- 11-06-19
Brilliant performance
Suzanne Toren does a magnificent job reading this book The character comes alive with all her nuance and subtlety. Brava!
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- Julie
- 08-03-16
Words heard are lovely!!!!!
To hear the words as this author put them together in such a way that delights the intellect is truly a treat! In addition , the reader's voice was, in my estimation, perfect for the part!!!!
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