Child of All Nations
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Narrated by:
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Lauren Davis
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By:
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Irmgard Keun
About this listen
In this utterly enchanting novel, some of the great themes of 1930s Europe are refracted through the eyes of a child who is both naive and wise beyond her years.
Kully knows some things you don't learn at school. She knows the right way to roll a cigarette and pack a suitcase. She knows that cars are more dangerous than lions. She knows that you can't enter a country without a passport or visa. And she knows that she and her parents can't go back to Germany again - her father's books are banned there.
But there are also things she doesn't understand, like why there might be a war in Europe - just that there are men named Hitler, Mussolini, and Chamberlain involved. Little Kully is far more interested in where their next meal will come from and the ladies who seem to buzz around her father.
Meanwhile, she and her parents roam through Europe. Her mother would just like to settle down, but as her restless father struggles to find a new publisher, the three must escape from country to country as their visas expire, money runs out, and hotel bills mount up.
Irrepressible Kully, her charming, feckless father, and her nervy, fragile mother are brought to life through Irmgard Keun's fast-paced prose.
Translated by Michael Hofmann.
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Story
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Star of Kazan
- By: Eva Ibbotson
- Narrated by: Ruth Jones
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. One day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door.
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not recommended for pleasure
- By SEE on 08-27-17
By: Eva Ibbotson
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The Road Home
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008, The Road Home is the best-selling story of Lev, a middle-aged migrant from Eastern Europe, who moves to London in search of work after losing his wife and job. Lev's London is awash with money, celebrity and complacency. The world Tremain creates is both convincing and poignant.
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OK - nice narration - good characters
- By bea on 02-21-11
By: Rose Tremain
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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Homesick
- My Own Story
- By: Jean Fritz
- Narrated by: Jean Fritz
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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This heartwarming fictionalized autobiography tells the story of what it is like for a little girl to be growing up in an unfamiliar place. While other girls her age were enjoying childhood in America, Jean Fritz was in China in the midst of political unrest. During this time, foreigners were becoming more and more unpopular, and evacuation at a moment’s notice was imminent. Although Jean appreciated the beauty of China - the mountains, the countryside, the sea - she knew she belonged in America and longed to make her home there.
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Great book!
- By R. SEVERSON on 10-19-18
By: Jean Fritz
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Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
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American Gods [TV Tie-In]
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow's best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday.
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Read other Neil Gaiman first
- By Robert on 04-16-11
By: Neil Gaiman
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A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
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Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
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The Sun Also Rises
- By: Ernest Hemingway, Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: William Hurt
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, The Sun Also Rises introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. In his first great literary masterpiece, Hemingway portrays an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.
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Great actor, terrible reader, kills classic
- By Kerry on 09-14-14
By: Ernest Hemingway, and others
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The Postcard
- By: Leah Fleming
- Narrated by: Elaine Claxton
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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2002, Australia. When Melissa discovers a postcard addressed to 'Desmond' among her recently deceased father's effects, she is determined to discover this person's identity and his relationship to her father. She soon embarks on a journey that will take her across oceans and into the past...
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Meh
- By Summer Layne on 03-06-15
By: Leah Fleming
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All for Nothing
- By: Walter Kempowski, Anthea Bell - translator, Jenny Erpenbeck - introduction
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat, and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish 12-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors - a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee.
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All for Nothing
- By Lynn on 03-16-19
By: Walter Kempowski, and others
What listeners say about Child of All Nations
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Teresa
- 08-28-08
A glimpse of a life in limbo
Loved it. The narraration was probably one of the best of any audiobook I've "read"- completely fit the character. I almost forgot I was listening to a book at times, it seemed like I was just listening to someone speak.
I agree with the previous reviewer about the story not really going anywhere, but I believe that's the author's intent, to paint a picture of a girl's life in exile rather than tell a story that moves along at a certain pace.
This book reminds me less of The Diary of Anne Frank and more of Stones in the River, providing a real understsnding of what Germans' lives at the time of WWII were like.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- toromei
- 11-23-09
Hidden gem
The mundane storyline and conversational narrative style belie the beauty of this work. I found it exquisitely boring until -- after listening to nearly half of it -- I became aware that this was a book very different than the one I had expected and adjusted my mindset accordingly.
This isn't a typical plot-driven work of fiction. It is a glimpse into the life and personality of a child growing up abroad, in the years leading up to the cataclysm of World War 2. Approaching this lustrous ribbon of luminous prose with an open mind and a bit of whimsy is its own reward.
As a literary experience among other works, I give it 4 stars. As a delight and as entertainment at such an unbelievably low price, I give it 5!
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6 people found this helpful