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Black Dog of Fate
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Peter Balakian
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915, including many of Balakian's relatives, in the century's first genocide.
In elegant, moving prose, Black Dog of Fate charts Balakian's growth and personal awakening to the facts of his family's history and the horrifying aftermath of the Turkish government's continued campaign to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against humanity. In unearthing the secrets of a family's past and how they affect its present, Black Dog of Fate gives fresh meaning to the story of what it means to be an American.
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Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: A young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war and after? So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life and change it.
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a powerful & unique work on the Holocaust
- By D. Littman on 03-06-19
By: Bart van Es
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The Great Spring
- Writing, Zen, and This ZigZag Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.
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An enjoyable insight
- By Leigh A on 05-22-23
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Habibi
- By: Naomi Shihab Nye
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The Possessed
- Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
- By: Elif Batuman
- Narrated by: Elif Batuman
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Possessed we watch Elif Batuman investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has 100 different words for crying; and see an 18th-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their places in The Possessed.
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Dear Russian Literary Diary...
- By Darwin8u on 08-29-17
By: Elif Batuman
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Nine Continents
- A Memoir In and Out of China
- By: Xiaolu Guo
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.
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must read
- By Jeff Darlington on 10-22-17
By: Xiaolu Guo
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Remember Us
- My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust
- By: Vic Shayne, Martin Small
- Narrated by: Peter Altschuler
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.
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A Tragic and Rich Life, With Lessons For All
- By still reading on 03-17-16
By: Vic Shayne, and others
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The Upstairs Wife
- An Intimate History of Pakistan
- By: Rafia Zakaria
- Narrated by: Rafia Zakaria
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.
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Mixed feelings
- By Darcy on 10-06-17
By: Rafia Zakaria
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The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
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If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Bad Indians
- A Tribal Memoir
- By: Deborah A. Miranda
- Narrated by: Deborah Miranda
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This beautiful and devastating book - part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir - should be required for anyone seeking to learn about California Indian history, past and present. Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems. The result is a work of literary art that is wise, angry, and playful all at once, a compilation that will break your heart and teach you to see the world anew.
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Bad recording
- By Aspyn Maes on 09-18-21
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Mosaic
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 19 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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>i>Mosaic is compelling storytelling at its best - from the fascinating details of Polish-Jewish culture and the rivalries and dramas of family life, to its moving account of lives torn apart by war and persecution, this an extraordinary true story of a family, and of one woman's journey to reclaim her heritage.
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Absolutely excellent!
- By Roberta on 09-22-11
By: Diane Armstrong
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Buddhaland Brooklyn
- A Novel
- By: Richard C. Morais
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in a quaint mountainside village in Japan, Seido Oda spent his boyhood fishing in clear mountainside streams and helping his parents run their small inn. At the age of 11, Oda is sent to study with the monks at a nearby Buddhist temple. This peaceful, quiet refuge in the remote mountains of Japan becomes home for the introverted monk - until he approaches his 40th birthday and is ordered by his superior to cross the ocean and open a temple in Brooklyn. Ripped from the isolated, serene life of his homeland temple, Oda receives a shock to his system in New York - a motley crew of American Buddhists with misguided practices.
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engaging listen
- By connie on 07-25-12
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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
What listeners say about Black Dog of Fate
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Karen F. Kanjian
- 01-21-23
Amazing storytelling - for an amazing story
Peter Balakian was able to recreate for the reader his own experience of discovery - of his family’s past and the terrifying and wonderful past of the Armenian people. The book asks: how could this genocide have happened—in full view of the world? How, in the face of the thousands of eyewitness accounts, is the silence and denial of governments entangled in geopolitical interests allowed to persist? These questions hang in the air for all of us, unanswered, like the ghosts of the unacknowledged and unburied.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Colton Rogers
- 10-23-19
Eh
Eh, it was alright. I had to read it for school and audible helps. Kind of boring but it was interesting to learn about some of the stuff about the genocide.
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- Lorna Boyd
- 04-27-15
couldn't put it down
this is last time I read an author-narrated book. the reading was infuriatingly bad. but in spite of his horrible & distracting phrasing, the story was so compelling that I read it straight thru. wonderfully written, lovely combination of personal family and graphic historical account of the Armenian experience.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-16-24
A story of a people’s survival against all odds.
The writer manages to intertwine the ordinary life of a seemingly ordinary American growing up in suburbia with the culture and dark history of his people—one which the reader is discovering and deciphering alongside the writer. This is an important subject, thoroughly researched and put in historic context. For anyone wishing to educate themselves about the history of the Armenian people, the barbarism of the Ottoman Empire, the often unknown tragedies that unfolded under the shadows of the First World War, the complicity of the current Turkish government, or about the unspeakable depths human of depravity while committing crimes of genocide, this is a very important, though often difficult read.
The writer’s narration lacks any performative elements, and is unfortunately mundane and even a bit annoying. His attempts at pronouncing Armenian words and names was so belabored, it was almost frustrating, since I’ve heard non-Armenians do a much better job of it. This may only register for Armenian speakers, since I imagine that others wouldn’t even know how comically “Americanized” Balakian’s pronunciations of even his own family members’ names were. I realized early on, at least for me, this would’ve been a much better read than a listen..but I stuck through it anyhow. My advice: Absolutely read it. Listen to it if you must. But, in no case, turn away from this poignant memoir. Trigger warning: for tender-hearted readers, the depictions of brutality, rape, mass murder, child abuse, and many more unspeakable crimes against humanity are exceedingly graphic and were almost too difficult for me, even though I am familiar with this history. Steel yourself.
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- Lm
- 06-27-13
Great book!
If you could sum up Black Dog of Fate in three words, what would they be?
Memoir
History
Shocking
Who was your favorite character and why?
Peter
What about Peter Balakian’s performance did you like?
Poetic intensity
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
. . . and you thought "Stand By Me" was a good story!
Any additional comments?
Loved it
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6 people found this helpful
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- Janice Horowitz
- 11-02-15
Author /reader?
What did you love best about Black Dog of Fate?
I could not get past the reader's tedious monotone...if I had not needed to finish this book for a book group, I never would have made it to the end. I wanted to put it down after an hour.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Serro Garabedian
- 10-25-15
Story everyone should read
It's been years that I had purchased the hard copy of Balakian 's book but unfortunately I've never read it. The audio version helped me to finish it in one week. Very convenient, even though sometimes I had to redo my make up. Thanks Balakian for writing this memoir to keep your grandmother' s and your people story alive.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Suren
- 03-21-18
i will read this one...difficult to listen to
What did you like best about Black Dog of Fate? What did you like least?
I have been waiting to listen to this book for a long time. Finally, it was the right time and I downloaded it. And, the author is not the person to read this. He makes it too much of a poem and the cadence is difficult.
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3 people found this helpful
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- margarit
- 05-09-21
One of the best
I found Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate to be one of the best memoirs I’ve read/listened to. As a third generation descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, this was the first time that someone had to put words to my own experience growing up in the diaspora. His words touched me so deeply, I could hardly get through the last few chapters without being moved to tears. While it might be difficult for those who did not grow up American to relate to Balakian’s depictions of American culture, I highly recommend this memoir to anyone interested in learning about the Armenian genocide. Balakian does an excellent job weaving historical facts into personal narrative; I appreciate the extensive research that went into writing this book. A must read for those who are interested in learning about the first genocide of the 20th century & Turkey’s systematic denial of committing the most atrocious crime against humanity of modern history. Trigger warning: some of his depictions retold by eye witnesses are quite explicit.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Vaan
- 04-24-21
This was a privilege, thank you Peter Balakian
I loved every second of this book, and narration I’d recommend it to everyone. It spanned an increasingly geography, time, places. This is an incredible piece of a living history of our collective humanity.
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1 person found this helpful