Bright Unbearable Reality Audiobook By Anna Badkhen cover art

Bright Unbearable Reality

Essays

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Bright Unbearable Reality

By: Anna Badkhen
Narrated by: Anna Badkhen
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $14.95

Buy for $14.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

2022 National Book Awards Longlist for Nonfiction

Essays about migration, displacement, and the hope for connection in a time of emotional and geopolitical disruption by a Soviet-born writer and former war correspondent.

Called a “chronicler of a world on the move” by The New York Review of Books, Anna Badkhen seeks what separates and binds us at a time when one in seven people has left their birthplace, while a pandemic dictates the direst season of rupture in humankind’s remembering. Her new essay collection, Bright Unbearable Reality, comprises 11 essays set on four continents—roving everywhere from Oklahoma to Azerbaijan—and united by a common thread of communion and longing.

In these essays, Badkhen addresses the human condition in the era of such unprecedented dislocation, contemplates the roles of memory and wonder in how we relate to one another, and asks how we can soberly and responsibly counter despair and continue to develop—or at least imagine—an emotional vocabulary against depravity.

The subject throughout the collection is bright unbearable reality itself, a translation of Greek enargeia, which, says the poet Alice Oswald, is “when gods come to earth not in disguise but as themselves”.

Essays include:

• In “The Pandemic, Our Common Story”, which takes place in the Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia, one of the locations where humankind originated, the onset of the global pandemic catches Badkhen mid-journey, researching human dispersal 160,000 years ago and migration in modern times.

• In “How to Read the Air”, set mostly in Philadelphia, Badkhen looks to the ancient Greeks for help pondering our need for certainty at a time of racist violence, political upheaval, and environmental cataclysm.

• “Ways of Seeing” and the title essay, “Bright Unbearable Reality,” wrestle with complications of distance and specifically the bird’s-eye view—the relationship between physical distance, understanding, and engagement.

• “Landscape with Icarus” examines how and why children go missing, while “Dark Matter” explores how violence always takes us by surprise.

©2022 Anna Badkhen (P)2022 Audible, Inc.
Emigration & Immigration Travel Writing & Commentary Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing Nonfiction
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Bright Unbearable Reality

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Hmmm

The writing is rich with imagery. The narration is flat, completely lacking affect. I would have liked more of an emotional interpretation leading to greater connection with the material.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful