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Baking Cakes in Kigali
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
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Publisher's summary
Once in a great while a debut novelist comes along who dazzles us with rare eloquence and humanity, who takes us to bold new places and into previously unimaginable lives. Gaile Parkin is just such a talent - and Baking Cakes in Kilgali is just such a novel. This gloriously written tale - set in modern-day Rwanda - introduces one of the most singular and engaging characters in recent fiction: Angel Tungaraza - mother, cake baker, keeper of secrets - a woman living on the edge of chaos, finding ways to transform lives, weave magic, and create hope amid the madness swirling all around her.
In Kigali, Angel runs a bustling business: Baking cakes for all occasions - cakes filled with vibrant color, buttery richness, and, most of all, a sense of hope only Angel can deliver...
A CIA agent’s wife seeks the perfect holiday cake but walks away with something far sweeter...a former boy-soldier orders an engagement cake, then, between sips of tea, shares an enthralling story...weary human rights workers...lovesick limo drivers. Amid this cacophony of native tongues, love affairs, and confessions, Angel’s kitchen is an oasis where people tell their secrets, where hope abounds and help awaits.
In this unlikely place, in the heart of Rwanda, unexpected things are beginning to happen: A most unusual wedding is planned...a heartbreaking mystery - involving Angel’s own family unravels...and extraordinary connections are being made among the men and women who have tasted Angel’s beautiful cakes...as a chain of events unfolds that will change Angel’s life - and the lives of those around her - in the most astonishing ways.
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- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-20
By: Jean Grainger
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44 Scotland Street
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The brilliant Alexander McCall Smith became an international sensation with his New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. His award-winning wit, made famous through that series, is fully on display in 44 Scotland Street.
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Smith's answer to Maupin
- By Amazon Customer on 10-23-05
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The Forgotten Secret
- By: Kathleen McGurl
- Narrated by: Melanie MacHugh
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s the summer of 1919, and Ellen O’Brien has her whole life ahead of her. Young, in love and leaving home for her first job, the future seems full of shining possibility. But war is brewing, and before long, Ellen and everyone around her are swept up by it. As Ireland is torn apart by the turmoil, Ellen finds herself facing the ultimate test of love and loyalty. A hundred years later and Clare Farrell has inherited a dilapidated old farmhouse in County Meath.
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The Forgotten Secret
- By Amazon Customer on 08-31-20
By: Kathleen McGurl
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Half a Lifelong Romance
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart. When they are reunited after many years, can they start their relationship again? Or is it destined to be the romance of only half a lifetime?
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super
- By Marcus Aurelius on 10-05-17
By: Eileen Chang
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Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
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A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
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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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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Gold Dust
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
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It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
- By Maria on 12-04-17
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Maeve's Times
- In Her Own Words
- By: Maeve Binchy
- Narrated by: Kate Binchy
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.
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A GLIMPSE THROUGH MAEVE'S LOOKING GLASS
- By jstrfic on 08-08-17
By: Maeve Binchy
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My Real Children
- By: Jo Walton
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know - what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead.
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A strange take on an otherwise simple story.
- By Lauren on 01-08-15
By: Jo Walton
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GI Brides
- The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love
- By: Duncan Barrett, Nuala Calvi
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The "friendly invasion" of Britain by over a million American G.I.s bewitched a generation of young women deprived of male company during the Second World War. With their exotic accents, smart uniforms, and aura of Hollywood glamour, the G.I.s easily conquered their hearts, leaving British boys fighting abroad green with envy. But for girls like Sylvia, Margaret, Gwendolyn, and even the skeptical Rae, American soldiers offered something even more tantalizing than chocolate, chewing gum, and nylon stockings: An escape route from Blitz-ravaged Britain.
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Wonderful true stories of very brave women
- By Cindy on 05-12-15
By: Duncan Barrett, and others
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Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
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One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
What listeners say about Baking Cakes in Kigali
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tina
- 04-25-13
Wonderful slice of life in modern Africa
Finished last night on the way home. The reader did a marvelous job with the many characters and accents!
Absolutely lovely slice of life in modern Africa (the Rwandan city of Kigali), in a series of vignettes that unfold as people come to Angel to order a cake for some occasion in their lives. From the wife of the Tanzanian minister, to American aid workers and educators, a Rwandan soldier who was pressed into the conflict as a boy, an Indian professor and his germaphobe wife, Kenyans, South Africans, and more, you get a sense of the polyglot nature of the city, a soft-focus picture of what all of these people have witnessed, and a sense of the hope and renewal they are feeling.
Angel herself, not well-educated but with an instinctive wisdom, plays consultant, matchmaker, peacemaker, negotiator of water bills, and mother to her five orphaned grandchildren, as well as the rest of her neighborhood. She doesn't seem to realize that she is the beloved center of her community.
I loved the humor and tone of this book, and the chance to see into Africa in this way. I loved the snippets of languages (people in Kigali, even the least educated, speak multiple languages at least in part, in order to interact). There is Swahili, Kenyawandan, English, French, Africaans, and a host of funny-sweet-sensible colloquialisms which are easily understood, such as Angel's assurance to her clients of confidentiality "because I am a Professional Somebody."
And there is cooking! Each of Angel's cakes is as unique as the person who ordered it. The family's excitement over scoring a bag of freshly-caught grasshoppers, and preparation of them for an evening feast (remove the legs, boil for a few minutes, then coat and fry) reminds me of a soft-shell crab or shrimp fry in the U.S. and actually made me want to try them.
Eye-opening, rewarding read and an enjoyable treat. Highly recommended.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sharon Ransom
- 09-30-18
Feeding the heart and soul via literal cakes
The catchy title gets an onlooker's attention immediately because, of course, who would not be curious about eating cakes? And it opens the door for conversation with complete strangers! The theme resonates universally with people because it emphasizes the repercussions of colonialism and the underlying struggle among people of the diaspora who are left holding the frayed ends of a faulted economic system based on a concept of free labor, which is essentially, slavery.
The cakes are a medium for uplifting the people of Kigali and giving hope to them, after mysteries of death, plagues of HIV along with genocide, has devastated them. The narrator's perspective is one of absolute respect for her people regardless of their plight and she wisely maneuvers them to help one another despite harboring a painful memory that is eventually reconciled or accepted through those said relationships with her fellowman.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bookworm O'Nerd
- 05-20-18
14 Cakes
This book was quite different from the books I have read/listened to in recent times, not necessarily great but not awful either. There are a few cringe worthy instances in the book (like unsolicited match-making) which is compensated by the author's gentle exploration of sensitive topics like the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, the still-prevalent practice of female genital mutilation, dominating presence of HIV/AIDS, religious judgment on suicide and many more.
The narrative that struck me the most was a conversation between the protagonist, Angel, and a genocide survivor, Francoise, on being a survivalist. Of all the characters and their tragedies, I found the one of Jeanne d'Arc as really heart wrenching. I was bit disturbed with the nonchalant treatment of Modeste and his two girlfriends. The book does have a handful of humorous moments, some the expense of reinforcing stereotypes and others by shattering the very same typecast (like an obnoxious, rude Canadian!). I really liked how the main character, Angel Tungaraza - a grand mother to five children, learns from her experiences and does not hold rigid to her beliefs irrationally.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dcgirl
- 03-11-21
Narrator was great
Lovely, quiet slice of life novel. The narrator did a great job with the words which are not words, giving a real feeling of hearing people in conversation. Great quarantine listen while we cannot travel.
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- karstensmom
- 09-16-12
Wonderful stories in a beautifully written book!
This book was recommended to me (otherwise, I don't know if I would have found it!) and I am so pleased that it was! It is a hidden gem!
The narration was perfect for this book, which is really like a collection of stories centered around a colorful group of people living in Rwanda. It ended too soon - I wanted to hear more about these people, who feel like friends and neighbors now! The author did a nice job of introducing cultural, societal, and economic ideas - things that can divide us as a society, but Angel is able to unite all those she touches with her wisdom and her cakes!
I hope we hear more from Gaile Parkin!
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1 person found this helpful
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- DR
- 05-03-23
Interesting
Very interesting to listen too. Not one of my favorites but I did enjoy it . The narrator was wonderful which made the book easier to listen to and more enjoyable
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- Knitme23
- 04-12-13
NOT Ladies' Detective--Which is okay!
This book presented a little bit of a challenge as an audiobook, since I had no context: was it supposed to be serious? Humorous? Sociological? Was it written by a Rwandan? How long was it?
Right off, I was struck by its "wanna be No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" flavor and its slightly awkward style, but before long I had gotten over those characteristics, and I began to enjoy the story and the interesting perspective that Parkin gave on life in Rwanda after the genocide in the 90's: this is not an "Africa in Peril" story, I am happy to say, but it gives the reader (listener) a sense of what it's like to live in a country that has undergone such a slaughter; where AIDS is rampant; where a cutting ceremony for a young girl might be a reality. While I do think there is a strong debt to Mma Ramotswe and Alexander McCall Smith here, this novel (and, possibly, series? Though this was published in 2010 and I haven't seen any others) digs more deeply into the social issues in Rwanda than Smith's books do.
The book is a pleasant and interesting read; while Parkin's writing can be a tad awkward in places, she's at her best when she tells less and shows more: for example, when she makes the off-handed comment that the name written on the christening cake for a baby girl is not, in fact, "Good Enough," as the parents originally wanted, but, instead, "Perfect." Go, Angel Tungaraza!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Lacie P.
- 12-21-20
Lovely book
This was such a nice read that reinforced the importance of acceptance, new beginnings, and love. If you need a feel good book this is a good one.
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