-
Discontent and Its Civilizations
- Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
From "one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers" (The New York Times), intimate and sharply observed commentary on life, art, politics, and "the war on terror".
Mohsin Hamid's brilliant, moving, and extraordinarily clever novels have not only made him an international best seller, they have earned him a reputation as a "master critic of the modern global condition" (Foreign Policy). His stories are at once timeless and of-the-moment, and his themes are universal: love, language, ambition, power, corruption, religion, family, identity. Here, he explores this terrain from a different angle in essays that deftly counterpoise the personal and the political, and are shot through with the same passion, imagination, and breathtaking shifts of perspective that gives his fiction its unmistakable electric charge.
A "water lily" who has called three countries on three continents his home - Pakistan, the birthplace to which he returned as a young father; the United States, where he spent his childhood and young adulthood; and Britain, where he married and became a citizen - Hamid writes about overlapping worlds with fluidity and penetrating insight. Whether he is discussing courtship rituals or pop culture, drones or the rhythms of daily life in an extended family compound, he transports us beyond the scarifying headlines of an anxious West and a volatile East, beyond stereotype and assumption, and helps to bring a dazzling, diverse global culture within emotional and intellectual reach.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by an elite valuation firm. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica shifting.
-
-
Beautiful throughout
- By Richard Lee on 02-18-24
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
The Last White Man
- A Novel
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth—an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
-
-
Flat
- By L. Rauch on 08-07-22
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
Moth Smoke
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid’s deftly conceived first novel, immediately marked him as an uncommonly gifted and ambitious young literary talent to watch when it was published in 2000. It tells the story of Daru Shezad, who, fired from his banking job in Lahore, begins a decline that plummets the length of Hamid’s sharply drawn, subversive tale. Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke was ahead of its time in portraying a contemporary Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the exoticized images of South Asia then familiar to the West.
-
-
Innovative in style and substance
- By Kevin on 01-13-22
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
- A Novel
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy's quest for wealth and love. His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world's pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation - and exceeds it.
-
-
The title is misleading, I loved this quick read.
- By Brad Mills on 04-28-17
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
Exit West
- A Novel
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice.
-
-
Where to Live?
- By David on 04-04-17
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
-
-
LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
-
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by an elite valuation firm. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica shifting.
-
-
Beautiful throughout
- By Richard Lee on 02-18-24
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
The Last White Man
- A Novel
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth—an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
-
-
Flat
- By L. Rauch on 08-07-22
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
Moth Smoke
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid’s deftly conceived first novel, immediately marked him as an uncommonly gifted and ambitious young literary talent to watch when it was published in 2000. It tells the story of Daru Shezad, who, fired from his banking job in Lahore, begins a decline that plummets the length of Hamid’s sharply drawn, subversive tale. Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke was ahead of its time in portraying a contemporary Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the exoticized images of South Asia then familiar to the West.
-
-
Innovative in style and substance
- By Kevin on 01-13-22
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
- A Novel
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy's quest for wealth and love. His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world's pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation - and exceeds it.
-
-
The title is misleading, I loved this quick read.
- By Brad Mills on 04-28-17
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
Exit West
- A Novel
- By: Mohsin Hamid
- Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice.
-
-
Where to Live?
- By David on 04-04-17
By: Mohsin Hamid
-
Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
-
-
LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
-
The Coming Wave
- Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful new technologies.
-
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
-
-
An innovative and fresh listening experience
- By Scott Garrioch on 01-14-21
By: George Saunders
-
How High We Go in the Dark
- A Novel
- By: Sequoia Nagamatsu
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Brian Nishii, Keisuke Hoashi, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.
-
-
Should come with a sadness warning
- By KJH on 03-16-22
-
A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
-
-
an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
-
Lessons
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Simon McBurney
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.
-
-
Narrator Simon McBurney gets my 100% rating
- By Peggy M on 09-26-22
By: Ian McEwan
-
A Brief History of Equality
- By: Thomas Piketty
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world’s leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding, a perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.
-
-
Excellent, more accessable, contribution.
- By P. Dean on 09-30-22
By: Thomas Piketty
-
Leadership
- Six Studies in World Strategy
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Henry Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders—Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher—through the distinctive strategies of statecraft that he believes they embodied. To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and, because he knew each of the subjects and participated in many of the events he describes, personal knowledge.
-
-
Architects of World Order
- By GrimLockz on 09-21-22
By: Henry Kissinger
-
The Price of Time
- The Real Story of Interest
- By: Edward Chancellor
- Narrated by: Luis Soto
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the beginning was the loan, and the loan carried interest. For at least five millennia people have been borrowing and lending at interest. Yet as capitalism became established from the late Middle Ages onwards, denunciations of interest were tempered because interest was a necessary reward for lenders to part with their capital. And interest performs many other vital functions: it encourages people to save; enables them to place a value on precious assets, such as houses and all manner of financial securities; and allows us to price risk.
-
-
Big landscape in time and subjects; Austrian view
- By Philo on 08-29-22
-
Hitch-22
- A Memoir
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: Christopher Hitchens
- Length: 17 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature.
-
-
Truth, the whole truth and nothing but.
- By Laura on 08-23-10
-
The Fall
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.
-
-
Wow Wow Wow
- By Lauren C on 07-14-21
By: Albert Camus
-
Notes on a Foreign Country
- An American Abroad in a Post-American World
- By: Suzy Hansen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
-
-
A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
-
Age of Ambition
- Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos, George Backman
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.
-
-
Come back when you have a warrant!
- By Neuron on 11-06-15
By: Evan Osnos
Related to this topic
-
Notes on a Foreign Country
- An American Abroad in a Post-American World
- By: Suzy Hansen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
-
-
A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
-
The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
-
-
The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
-
The Assassins' Gate
- America in Iraq
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Assassins' Gate, so dubbed by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point?
-
-
Highly Recommended
- By Drapeau on 02-01-07
By: George Packer
-
There Was a Country
- A Personal History of Biafra
- By: Chinua Achebe
- Narrated by: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.
-
-
The Audible Edition Is a Disaster
- By Olu on 11-28-12
By: Chinua Achebe
-
Africa Is Not a Country
- Notes on a Bright Continent
- By: Dipo Faloyin
- Narrated by: Dipo Faloyin
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So often, Africa has been depicted simplistically as a uniform land of famines and safaris, poverty and strife, stripped of all nuance. In this bold and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective, weaving a vibrant tapestry of stories that bring to life Africa's rich diversity, communities, and histories. Starting with an immersive description of the lively and complex urban life of Lagos, Faloyin unearths surprising truths about many African countries' colonial heritage and tells the story of the continent's struggles with democracy through seven dictatorships.
-
-
Brilliant!
- By Jane on 01-26-23
By: Dipo Faloyin
-
The Invitation-Only Zone
- The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project
- By: Robert S. Boynton
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones" - the fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves, not prisons.
-
-
Over enthusiastic reader!
- By AJW on 02-14-16
-
Notes on a Foreign Country
- An American Abroad in a Post-American World
- By: Suzy Hansen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
-
-
A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
-
The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
-
-
The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
-
The Assassins' Gate
- America in Iraq
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Assassins' Gate, so dubbed by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point?
-
-
Highly Recommended
- By Drapeau on 02-01-07
By: George Packer
-
There Was a Country
- A Personal History of Biafra
- By: Chinua Achebe
- Narrated by: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.
-
-
The Audible Edition Is a Disaster
- By Olu on 11-28-12
By: Chinua Achebe
-
Africa Is Not a Country
- Notes on a Bright Continent
- By: Dipo Faloyin
- Narrated by: Dipo Faloyin
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So often, Africa has been depicted simplistically as a uniform land of famines and safaris, poverty and strife, stripped of all nuance. In this bold and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective, weaving a vibrant tapestry of stories that bring to life Africa's rich diversity, communities, and histories. Starting with an immersive description of the lively and complex urban life of Lagos, Faloyin unearths surprising truths about many African countries' colonial heritage and tells the story of the continent's struggles with democracy through seven dictatorships.
-
-
Brilliant!
- By Jane on 01-26-23
By: Dipo Faloyin
-
The Invitation-Only Zone
- The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project
- By: Robert S. Boynton
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones" - the fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves, not prisons.
-
-
Over enthusiastic reader!
- By AJW on 02-14-16
-
Children of Jihad
- By: Jared Cohen
- Narrated by: Jason Collins
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand. While studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he took a crash course in Arabic, read voraciously on the history and culture of the Middle East, and in 2004 he embarked on the first of a series of incredible journeys to the Middle East. In an effort to try to understand the spread of radical Islamist violence, he focused his research on Muslim youth.
-
-
Awakens hope
- By Diane on 09-23-08
By: Jared Cohen
-
India
- A Portrait
- By: Patrick French
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Second only to China in the magnitude of its economic miracle and second to none in its potential to shape the new century, India is fast undergoing one of the most momentous transformations the world has ever seen. In this dazzlingly panoramic book, Patrick French chronicles that epic change, telling human stories to explain a larger national narrative. Melding on-the-ground reports with a deep knowledge of history, French exposes the cultural foundations of India’s political, economic and social complexities.
-
-
An Epic Book by Award-Winning Author
- By morton on 10-31-11
By: Patrick French
-
We Don't Know Ourselves
- A Personal History of Modern Ireland
- By: Fintan O'Toole
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism.
-
-
Relentlessly Negative
- By John on 06-02-22
By: Fintan O'Toole
-
The People's Republic of Amnesia
- Tiananmen Revisited
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.
-
-
great book and recording
- By Robert Peters on 06-14-16
By: Louisa Lim
-
Arab and Jew
- Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
- By: David K. Shipler
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 27 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Shipler delves into the origins of the prejudices of Jews and Arabs that have been intensified by war, terrorism, and nationalism. Focusing on the diverse cultures that exist side by side in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories, Shipler examines the process of indoctrination that begins in schools; he discusses the far ranging effects of socioeconomic differences, historical conflicts between Islam and Judaism, attitudes about the Holocaust, and much more.
-
-
'Arab and Jew' Needs a Good Editor
- By Robert W. Gillespie on 10-23-03
By: David K. Shipler
-
Age of Ambition
- Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos, George Backman
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.
-
-
Come back when you have a warrant!
- By Neuron on 11-06-15
By: Evan Osnos
-
Indelible City
- Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of Hong Kong has long been dominated by competing myths: to Britain, a “barren rock” with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial, at last returned to the ancestral fold. For decades, Hong Kong’s history was simply not taught, especially to Hong Kongers, obscuring its origins as a place of refuge and rebellion.
-
-
Visceral History
- By Amazon Customer on 11-21-23
By: Louisa Lim
-
Children of Paradise
- The Struggle for the Soul of Iran
- By: Laura Secor
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The drama that shaped today’s Iran, from the Revolution to the present day. In 1979, seemingly overnight - moving at a clip some 30 years faster than the rest of the world - Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be.
-
-
Most Engaging
- By malita on 12-29-22
By: Laura Secor
-
The Invention of Russia
- From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War
- By: Arkady Ostrovsky
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The end of Communism and breakup of the Soviet Union was a time of euphoria around the world, but Russia today is violently anti-American and dangerously nationalistic. So how did we go from the promise of those days to the autocratic police state of Putin's new Russia? The Invention of Russia reaches back to the darkest days of the Cold War to tell the story of the fight for the soul of a nation.
-
-
Sad Story of Russia's Abandonment of Liberalism
- By Amazon Customer on 10-03-16
By: Arkady Ostrovsky
-
The Almost Nearly Perfect People
- Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
- By: Michael Booth
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than 10 years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely audiobook, he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another.
-
-
Obsessed with bad politics
- By Erik on 09-07-20
By: Michael Booth
-
The Miracle of the Kurds
- A Remarkable Story of Hope Reborn in Northern Iraq
- By: Stephen Mansfield
- Narrated by: Stephen Mansfield
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were murdered under the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. Some four thousand Kurdish villages were destroyed. Betrayed again and again by the nations of the world, the Kurds were as decimated as any people in history. Then came the Kurdish Miracle, that combination of ancient wisdom and modern economic genius that is now making the Kurdish homeland one of the most prosperous places on earth.
-
-
Long live the Kurds
- By Dry Bones on 03-09-19
-
Prague Winter
- A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history.
-
-
History from a Personal Perspective
- By Jeanette Finan on 02-22-13
What listeners say about Discontent and Its Civilizations
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Huffie
- 04-10-21
Thought-Provoking Essays by Mohsin Hamid
I particularly liked the essays in the first half or 2/3 of the collection that Bowles gave background on Hamid as a person and on his views of living in Lahore, New York and London. The pieces on his writing is a craft were very interesting, but the pieces on his views of our diverse and changing world were most thought-provoking. The final essays are mostly on Pakistan and will give western readers some insight into the situation there, perhaps in a broad stroke way, in much food for thought for those living in Pakistan.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Affyb
- 07-31-15
Good story but too many statistics
As a Pakistani this book allowed me to revisit Pakistan's political history through present and its relationship with America. However, Mohsin doesn't fully explain its impact directly on his life and or his family. This would have been more engaging.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Viva
- 09-20-17
Favorite of Hamid's writings
While I still haven't read Moth Smoke, this is my favorite of Hamid's works. Thoughtful and articulate.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ray
- 07-16-15
A thought provoking insight into the modern political and cultural landscape
If want to think about the clash of cultures in a interesting intelligent way this is for you
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- hanaa
- 08-30-15
Narrator
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
I hate to say this, but I was unable to listen to this Narrator. Maybe he is talented in many other things, but narration or reading is DEFINETLY not one of his talents. Or maybe it is the audio quality that taped him. He mumbles and his voice trails away , I had to turn the volume to the loudest back and forth. Maybe if someone else read it ,I would have understood it better. I just finished another Pakistani story, the narrator was marvelous, " I dared to call him father" by Bilquis Sheikh and the narrator was I think Lorna something. Her diction, her reading ,acting etc was v pleasant. I really apologize, but it is a friendly critique, maybe if someone else read it, I could listen to it and understand it . The subject was v interesting though .
What didn’t you like about Mohsin Hamid’s performance?
I don't know him and I don't want to hurt his feelings or ruin his future. This is a very friendly advice to just learn from it. He has a nice speaking voice, but maybe the audio equipment was not working ,so he seemed as if not interested, he didn't project his voice clearly, his voice trails away as if whispering . So overall if he took Speech and how to project or voice training, maybe that would help him in the future.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
As I said before, I really tried my best to listen, but, I couldn't stay with the recording . Tried to rewind etc, and sometimes I just drifted to sleep .
Any additional comments?
I'm really saying this just to help him in the future. No one is perfect by birth, some are really talented and don't need schooling, many others have to work harder and train longer to achieve the results hoped for. All of us are God's wonderful creation, made in His image ( our eternal spirits of course, not our gender) So all of us are valuable with different talents.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!