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Haroun and the Sea of Stories
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
Discover Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie's classic fantasy novel.
Set in an exotic eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz. In this captivating work of fantasy from the author of Midnight's Children and The Enchantress of Florence, Haroun sets out on an adventure to restore the poisoned source of the sea of stories. On the way he encounters many foes, all intent on draining the sea of all its storytelling powers.
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Beautiful Queen Inos married the loyal stableboy Rap and made him her king. They were very much in love, and they lived happily ever after. Fifteen years went by. Rap and Inos were comfortable, secure, and truly happy, raising their family in the little backwater kingdom of Krasnegar, well removed from the hurly-burly of great affairs.... But in far-off Hub, the old Imperor's health - and, some said, his sanity - deteriorated inexorably. The borderlands were seething....
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High expectations
- By Ryan M. Kelley on 04-08-14
By: Dave Duncan
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Book 1
- By: J.K. Rowling
- Narrated by: Jim Dale
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!
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A great reading of the wrong book
- By P on 11-24-15
By: J.K. Rowling
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- By: Douglas Adams
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last 15 years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
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HHTGH - Lightly Fried
- By J. Medany on 05-08-05
By: Douglas Adams
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Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror
- By: Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Thirteen-year-old Falcon Quinn and his neighbors, Max and Megan, board bus number 13 for school on an ordinary day in Cold River, Maine. Only the bus doesn't take its ordinary route, and Falcon and his friends soon find themselves in an extraordinary place on Shadow Island, at the Academy for Monsters. With a student body stranger than the cast of any monster movie Falcon has ever seen, the academy is home to creatures and oddities of all kinds.
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Brilliant Narration
- By framed on 03-29-12
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Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens & Peter and Wendy
- By: J. M. Barrie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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When Peter Pan and his fairy companion, Tinker Bell, fly in through the window of Wendy's nursery one night, it is the beginning of an adventure that whisks Wendy and her brothers, Michael and John, off to Neverland. There, they will find mermaids, fairies, pirates led by the sinister Captain Hook, and the crocodile who bit off his leg - and still pursues him in hope of the rest!
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amazing
- By Tori on 07-05-18
By: J. M. Barrie
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The Colour of Magic
- Discworld, Book 1
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
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TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
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The Infernal City
- Elder Scrolls Series #1
- By: Greg Keyes
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Four decades after the Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel is threatened anew by an ancient and all-consuming evil. It is Umbriel, a floating city that casts a terrifying shadow-for wherever it falls, people die and rise again. And it is in Umbriel's shadow that a great adventure begins and a group of unlikely heroes meet. A legendary prince with a secret. A spy on the trail of a vast conspiracy. A mage obsessed with his desire for revenge. And Annaïg, a young girl in whose hands the fate of Tamriel may rest.
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Umbriel is coming
- By Brenden Zapp on 02-01-13
By: Greg Keyes
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Larklight
- By: Philip Reeve
- Narrated by: Greg Steinburner
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1851 a mysterious visitor to Art Mumby's space home has plans for a calamity that will destroy not only the entire British Empire, but also the known universe. Can disaster be prevented with help from Art's irritating sister Myrtle, a few exotic space creatures, and an extraterrestrial pirate?
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Great fun!
- By Margot Vigeant on 02-29-08
By: Philip Reeve
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Dark Lord of Derkholm
- Derkholm Series, Book 1
- By: Diana Wynne Jones
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Mr. Chesney operates Pilgrim Parties, a tour group that takes paying participants into an outer realm where the inhabitants play frightening and foreboding roles. The time has come to end the staged madness...but can it really be stopped?
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One of my Favorite Fantasy Books
- By Jake on 08-09-19
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A Whole New World
- A Twisted Tale
- By: Liz Braswell, Disney Press
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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When Jafar steals the genie's lamp, he uses his first two wishes to become sultan and the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Agrabah lives in fear, waiting for his third and final wish. To stop the power-mad ruler, Aladdin and the deposed Princess Jasmine must unite the people of Agrabah in rebellion. But soon their fight for freedom threatens to tear the kingdom apart in a costly civil war. What happens next? A "street rat" becomes a leader. A princess becomes a revolutionary. And listeners will never look at the story of Aladdin in the same way again.
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Loved this!!!
- By Catherine E on 08-04-16
By: Liz Braswell, and others
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Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes
- By: Jonathan Auxier
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is the utterly beguiling tale of a ten-year-old blind orphan who has been forced into a life of crime. One fateful afternoon, Peter steals a mysterious box that contains three magical pairs of eyes. When he tries the first pair, he is instantly transported to a hidden island where he is presented with a special quest: to travel beyond the known world and rescue a lost kingdom from its treacherous ruler....
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Enjoyable listen but not for the youngest kids
- By Marie on 12-10-15
By: Jonathan Auxier
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
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The performance is enchanting.
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The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoric epic of an unnamed country that is "not quite Pakistan". In this dazzling tale of an ongoing duel between the families of two men - one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure - Rushdie brilliantly portrays a world caught between honor and humiliation.
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Should have quit at chapter 2
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The Enchantress of Florence
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In the imperial capital of the Mughal Empire, a traveler arrives at the court of Emperor Akbar. The traveler, Mogor dell'Amore, has a tale to tell, and as the words flow out of him, the tale's rich tapestry of power and desire begins to take on a life of its own.
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The Enchantress of Florence ... Why?!
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Shalimar the Clown
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When Maximilian Ophuls is murdered outside his daughter's home by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, it appears to be a political killing. Ophuls is the former U.S. ambassador to India and America's leading figure in counter-terrorism. But there is much more to Ophuls and his assassin, a mysterious man calling himself "Shalimar the Clown", than meets the eye. One woman is at the center of their shared history, a history of betrayal and deception.
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Incredible
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The Jaguar Smile
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"I did not go to Nicaragua intending to write a book, or, indeed, to write at all: but my encounter with the place affected me so deeply that in the end I had no choice." So notes Salman Rushdie in his first work of nonfiction, a book as imaginative and meaningful as his acclaimed novels. In The Jaguar Smile, Rushdie paints a brilliantly sharp and haunting portrait of the people, the politics, the terrain, and the poetry of "a country in which the ancient, opposing forces of creation and destruction were in violent collision".
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simply Amazing!
- By Cesar Briones on 07-01-18
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
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The performance is enchanting.
- By Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Salman Rushdie
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Shame
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Should have quit at chapter 2
- By G. Miller on 06-23-23
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The Enchantress of Florence ... Why?!
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Shalimar the Clown
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Incredible
- By Barry on 12-07-05
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The Jaguar Smile
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simply Amazing!
- By Cesar Briones on 07-01-18
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Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
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Outstanding book, superb narration
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The Satanic Verses
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Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
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Fury
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
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East, West
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A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star; Indian diplomats, who as childhood friends hatched Star Trek fantasies, must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another.
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Why I Read Rushdie
- By Dorie H on 10-29-24
By: Salman Rushdie
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Grimus
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After drinking an elixir that bestows immortality upon him, a young Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next 700 years sailing the seas with the blessing - and ultimately the burden - of living forever. Eventually, weary of the sameness of life, he journeys to the mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other immortals obsessed with their own stasis and sets out to scale the island's peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect emits.
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Excellent narration, but story is a mess
- By Stevie McCann on 01-29-19
By: Salman Rushdie
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Victory City
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- Unabridged
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In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—“victory city”—the wonder of the world.
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Rushdie never fails to engage.
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By: Salman Rushdie
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Languages of Truth
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Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
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SALMAN RUSHDIE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-24-21
By: Salman Rushdie
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Creatures of Light and Darkness
- By: Roger Zelazny
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To save his kingdom, Anubis, Lord of the Dead, sends forth his servant on a mission of vengeance. At the same time, from The House of Life, Osiris sends forth his son, Horus, on the same mission to destroy utterly and forever The Prince Who Was a Thousand.
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Great writing; the reading...
- By Gereg Jones Muller on 08-16-22
By: Roger Zelazny
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Palace Walk
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A national best seller in both hardcover and paperback, the first book of the masterful Cairo Trilogy introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.
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great book, not so great narration
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By: Naguib Mahfouz, and others
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Quichotte
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Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
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The Best Narration I have Ever Heard
- By Bubikon on 12-12-19
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Golden House
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- Unabridged
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Story
On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family.
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PERFECTION
- By ilene on 09-28-17
By: Salman Rushdie
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Knife
- Meditations After an Attempted Murder
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond.
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Triumph of Life
- By Donna Ponte on 04-17-24
By: Salman Rushdie
What listeners say about Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joe Kraus
- 01-08-19
Slight as story, obscure as allegory
Somewhere, someone is spilling poison into the sea of stories, threatening to ruin the way we narrate a full sense of ourselves. That’s a paraphrase of this sometimes magical book, but it’s also – necessarily – a reference to our own historical moment. I am reading this alongside Lee McIntyre’s Post-Truth and Kay Ryan’s Erratic Facts collection of poetry, very different works that all invite us to think about what it means to be shaped by the stories around us.
This is not a story of Trump’s America. On the surface, it’s an inventive children’s adventure, one full of terrific notions like the idea that all stories have their source in a bottomless sea, that it’s possible to have a sword fight with one’s shadow, or that there can be laminate-like jackets that keep you warm while weighing next to nothing.
As a children’s adventure it’s fun but slight. For all that we’re told that happy endings are rare in life and story, the apparent convention of the story argues that we’ll end up happy. There are hoops to jump through, but the bottom line is that this is for children and there is no way Rushdie would let them down.
Of course, as I well recall, this was the first thing Rushdie wrote after the staggering controversy of The Satanic Verses, the international best-seller that won him a death sentence from the Ayatollah Khomeini. That was a terrifying and inspiring time, and Rushdie became a symbol of the power of narrative in the West as a device for fighting the intolerance and fundamentalism of the East (and maybe within our own society too).
So I know – and I consulted a quick reader’s guide to reassure myself – that this is also a kind of allegory. Haroun and his father Rashid are more or less innocents who find themselves awash in story as various adversaries try to undermine them. It’s easy – maybe too easy – to see the worst of these villains as a kind of Khomeini figure, a smaller-in-person character intent on poisoning all stories at their root.
For all that temptation, though, for all the similar temptation to see this as something presaging the moment of Trump, I can’t make this story work for me as allegory overall. I simply don’t know the situation of early 1990s international Islam well enough, and I don’t know enough of the references. I spot the occasional 1001 Nights nod, but there are too many things that come to me as esoterica. (Rushdie acknowledges that when he gives a quick afterword on where his names come from.)
So, while I enjoyed the play of language and many of the particular inventions here, I couldn’t make it work as political allegory and I ultimately found it only satisfying as a tale of magic and adventure. I might have enjoyed this more in an annotated edition (or without a narrator who, excellent most of the time, brought in a variety of over-the-top Hannah-Barbara voices for some of the characters) but, bringing to it what I have, I found it only modestly satisfying.
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- L. Adams
- 03-08-19
Best performance ever
I loved the story on its own, but the performance was truly exceptional. Neil Shah made the book so entertaining. He has sort of ruined me for other narrators—he was that good. As a whole, this was one of my favorite audiobooks ever.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-18-22
The Importance of Story
Beautiful use of language and description. An incredible journey like Wizard of Oz. A must read!
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- S. Small
- 05-22-24
Fantastical and fun story
I loved this story and the reader is phenomenal in how he brings the characters alive.
If you like, begin with the very last chapter that explains the origins of some unfamiliar names and words. You’ll smile as you hear their meanings wrapped within the story itself.
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- Grateful Listener SME
- 01-11-19
Outstanding surprise!
This was my first reading of anything by Salman Rushdie. I’m sorry I’ve kept myself from this pleasure until now!
I had no idea of his wit, the gems of humor, human nature observations, delightful turns of phrasing I would find on nearly every page! I found the stories-within-stories to be refreshing, thought provoking in their humor, irony and clever words choices. I loved the characters and, the narration was superb — one of the best of the hundreds of narrators I’ve now heard. I’ll read/listen to more of Rushdie and look for more narration by Neil Shah! Pure pleasure!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Aparries
- 01-06-19
Fun Arabian Alice in Wonderland
This is a very fun story. It’s a sweet adventure story that moves swiftly and holds your attention. Suitable for the entire family with names that will make everyone giggle, especially the kiddos. I’ve been wanting to read Salman Rushdie for a long time and hadn’t gotten around to it. What a great imagination and flare for storytelling. I will definitely be reading another and soon.
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- Her Fashioned Life
- 08-22-22
Pretty good nice story
One of the better of the books I’ve had to read for school! glad they made me read it
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- Catherine Puma
- 01-10-19
Perfect Performance of Limited Story
This is a fun young adult story about a young man who goes on a fantastical adventure to save not just the dreamworld he gets sucked into, but also his own family unit along the way. I really liked the explanation of the names at the end; it enhanced my interpretation of the characters. The lighthearted nature of the narrative and the sense of humor reminded me of something C.S. Lewis might have written, especially when writing all the interesting places the siblings travel to in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader".
However, it just didn’t seem to have much to say other than the base story. I didn’t feel like there was any layers to the story, which extremely limits its demographic. I can’t see being properly studied in school or loved for generations to come.
If you already have a child who enjoys this story, however, then I HIGHLY recommend gifting them the narration by Neil Shah. All the voices are perfect!! Blabbermouth is my favorite part to this story, but I have read Toy Story fan fiction that is almost as good, so I wouldn’t list this as one of my favorite children’s tales of all time.
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- KinKmg72
- 03-29-19
Fanciful and with glorious language
I've read the book half a dozen times over the span of twenty plus years. Loved every minute of this performance. Can't help being charmed by the story. Admire Mr. Rushdie's use of the language.
Have kept it on my device as well as in the cloud so I can re-listen to parts of it. Even random passages taken out of context are fun.
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- Karen Thomas
- 01-12-19
Almost Dr Seuss-ish, but, but, but, excellent!
Great story about stories, interesting names and creatures, excellent narrator. If you like fantasy. that's a little or a lot silly, you'll love this book.
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