
Martyr!
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Arian Moayed
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By:
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Kaveh Akbar
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.”—Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of There There
“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.”—Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.
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Critic reviews
“Incandescent . . . Akbar has created an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic. But it speaks to Akbar’s storytelling gifts that Martyr! is both a riveting character study and piercing family saga . . . Akbar is a dazzling writer, with bars like you wouldn't believe . . . What Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A dazzling, thrilling debut novel about identity and loss . . . Martyr! thrillingly depicts why we cobble selves from alloys of words and cultures.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A brilliant and blisteringly alive novel about not just how we go on, but also why. Kaveh Akbar's first novel is so stunning, so wrenching, and so beautifully written that reading it for the first time, I kept forgetting to breathe. I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life."—John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars
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Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
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Fahrenheit 451
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
- By Joel on 03-27-17
By: Ray Bradbury
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Brain Damage
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
- By Jennifer Chichester on 09-16-22
By: Freida McFadden
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Mary Jane
- By: Amy Herzog
- Narrated by: Rachel McAdams, April Matthis, Brenda Wehle, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
- Original Recording
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Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams stars in Mary Jane, a poignant and intimate drama following a single mother’s journey caring for her chronically ill young son. Set in New York City, the play unfolds in two parts—Mary Jane's small Queens apartment and a pediatric hospital. With unflinching honesty and unexpected humor, we witness Mary Jane's tireless devotion, her interactions with medical professionals, and her struggle to maintain her sense of self.
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Amazing performance
- By Andrew Reynolds on 12-28-24
By: Amy Herzog
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The Grandmother
- By: Jane E. James
- Narrated by: Anna Cordell, Max Dinnen
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.
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Not too outlandish
- By Jackie H on 12-14-24
By: Jane E. James
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Dead Med
- By: Freida McFadden
- Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso, Scott Merriman
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Heather McKinley dreamed of becoming a doctor, she imagined curing sick kids and sporting pink stethoscopes. She never anticipated the sleepless nights, grueling exams, and endless labs. And she certainly never knew that her medical school earned the nickname Dead Med thanks to the tragic history of students overdosing on illegal drugs. But Heather would never consider doing anything like that. That is, until her longtime boyfriend dumps her, she finds herself failing anatomy, and her world starts to crumble.
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Hmm
- By Morgan Meaux on 08-22-24
By: Freida McFadden
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Slayers: A Buffyverse Story
- By: Christopher Golden, Amber Benson
- Narrated by: Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter, James Charles Leary, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Story
Original cast members from the beloved TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reunite for an all-new adventure about connections that never die—even if you bury them. A decade has passed since the epic final battle that concluded Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV). The game-changing spell that gave power to all potential Slayers persists. With new Slayers constantly emerging, things are looking grim for the bad guys.
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A dream come true
- By Anonymous User on 10-12-23
By: Christopher Golden, and others
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He Who Fights with Monsters 2
- A LitRPG Adventure (He Who Fights with Monsters, Book 2)
- By: Shirtaloon, Travis Deverell
- Narrated by: Heath Miller
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.
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Contrary to common reviews
- By Karen on 05-21-21
By: Shirtaloon, and others
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Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola.
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Beautiful writing and performance of realistic native family saga
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Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
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not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
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The Heart in Winter
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October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
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Road to nowhere
- By Glenda O'Rourke on 07-29-24
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All Fours
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- By: Miranda July
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Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.
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would not recommend
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-24
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James
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Story
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
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Can we ever be free
- By J. Stirling on 04-04-24
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You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
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One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
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Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
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Wandering Stars
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Overall
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Performance
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Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola.
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Beautiful writing and performance of realistic native family saga
- By ReallyNelie on 07-12-24
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Good Material
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Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
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not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
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The Heart in Winter
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Performance
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October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
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Road to nowhere
- By Glenda O'Rourke on 07-29-24
By: Kevin Barry
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All Fours
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- By: Miranda July
- Narrated by: Miranda July
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
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Overall
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Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.
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would not recommend
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-24
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James
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
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When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
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Can we ever be free
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One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
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Confusing and Difficult to Understand
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Intermezzo
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- By: Sally Rooney
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Story
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret.
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I felt a lot of empathy towards the excellently developed characters.
- By Hanoverian girl on 09-29-24
By: Sally Rooney
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Help Wanted
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When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.
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Compelling story of life in retail
- By MRM on 08-20-24
By: Adelle Waldman
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Voyage of the Damned
- By: Frances White
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- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor’s ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess’s Mountain. Aboard are the twelve heirs of the provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing. All except one: Ganymedes Piscero—class clown, slacker and all-around disappointment.
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Twists and turns and I didn’t see that coming
- By C. Miranda on 09-02-24
By: Frances White
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Bluebeard
- By: Jim Clemente, Peter McDonnell
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1919, Kathryn Wombacher finds a lonely-hearts ad placed by one Walter Andrew: "Would be pleased to correspond with a refined young lady or widow. Object, matrimony.” Kathryn and Walter fall in love and marry within weeks. What Kathryn doesn’t know...is that her new husband is really James “Bluebeard” Watson, a notorious West Coast serial killer who catfished and married 22 women, murdering 10.
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Performances
- By HappyMom on 05-24-24
By: Jim Clemente, and others
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Annie Bot
- A Novel
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard.
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Good, but not great
- By Katie Ramey on 03-25-24
By: Sierra Greer
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Blue Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Hari Kunzru
- Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
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An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
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Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
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Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
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Cold Crematorium
- Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
- By: József Debreczeni, Paul Olchváry - translator, Jonathan Freedland
- Narrated by: Laurence Dobiesz
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944; had he been selected to go “left,” his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the “lucky” ones, he was sent to the “right,” which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labor in a series of camps, ending in the “Cold Crematorium”—the so-called hospital of the forced labor camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution.
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Learned so much more about the Holocaust
- By Jerseygirl on 02-03-24
By: József Debreczeni, and others
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Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
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Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
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My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change.
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Beautifully written
- By Anonymous User on 06-24-24
By: Hisham Matar
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Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
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The writing, the pace.
- By Susan on 11-22-24
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Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here
- The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
- By: Jonathan Blitzer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Blitzer, André Santana
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. For years, the majority came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but many more have begun their journey much farther away. Some flee persecution, others crime or hunger. They may have already been deported, but the United States remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. They will take their chances.
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How America Created its Own Border Problem
- By Amazon Customer on 04-19-24
By: Jonathan Blitzer
What listeners say about Martyr!
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Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Performance
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Story
- Dolce Momento
- 02-17-24
Very unique
An unexpected story, which is beautifully written, in the voice of various characters, and a third party narrator. It explores a multitude of themes, including addiction, guilt, racism, loss, sexuality, dreams, escapism, art, war, and the immigrant experience. It resonates as deeply personal and intense, and in many ways is strange in a wonderful way, original and unique.
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- L. M. Harvey
- 02-18-24
Gorgeous language, riveting story revealed at just the right pace, richly developed characters and perfectly performed
Didn’t dislike anything. Poetic but narrative drives you forward with perfect narrator…gives a moving, clear performance that serves the story well
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- Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
- 07-03-24
startling
this novel has its own rhythm, it's own nonlinearity. the plot is strong enough to be plot-driven, but we get so much more. a real treasure
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Performance
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Story
- Devan H.
- 07-30-24
Captivating
Story held me tight and hyper-focused through every twist and turn. Truly emotionally captivating.
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- SK
- 08-05-24
Fantastic
Loved the stories. Factual and fantastical. The narrator did an excellent job too. Beautiful work! Thank you!!!!
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Story
- Derek Meyer
- 07-04-24
Whispering
why is the narrator whispering instead of reading the book? poor form. was very hard to hear even on headphones.
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- Shima
- 08-14-24
A familiar memoir for many Iranian immigrants
I like how the story was shaped and particularly found the humorous fantasies (the dialogues and stories about ancient poets) interesting. The story grows as you go through chapters and keep you away from
putting the book aside. I have a mix feeling about the ending and believe it could have ended stronger and maybe different (?)
In overall it’s an app
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- CMTPW
- 08-14-24
Lots to think about
Many topics to think about. Some beautiful lines. Sometimes the story took too many turns and I lost the thread.
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- Edward Foley
- 10-15-24
Devastatingly beautiful
This amazing work weaves an intricate story from the strands of quite distinctive lives that results in a brilliantly woven narrative. The language is so rich and filled with so many linguistic turns that I ended up bookmarking this work more than any since On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Not only displaying literary finesse, the book faces some of the most daunting challenges of being human head on with with wisdom and wit. The book should be required reading in cross-cultural philosophy courses. Finally, the narration was completely captivating. The vocal oscillation between male and female characters, USonians and Iranians was credible and riveting. The ending broke my heart and lifted my spirit. Most amazing writing.
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- Jaye Nelia
- 11-19-24
Wrackingly beautiful and painfully funny!
I can’t even….this is a kind of story about all stories, about how every person you know or see is living a story…and it reminded me to be careful, to be clear and kind with others because all the stories are spinning our experiences around even as we have them. That’s how I felt reading it, though this may just be me. A book this great invites you to feel any and everything as it goes deeper, gets bigger, and surprises you again and again. I couldn’t get a good grip on it and after awhile I didn’t want to.
I don’t think there’s a need to describe the plot here. Listen to the first few minutes and the hook is in. Akbar is brilliant with words and ingenious with images, and I found the presentation of his culture stunning — his love-hate for it, its love-hate for him. I will certainly buy a copy of Martyr so I can experience it on the page, but I’ll also listen to many portions again and again. Also, the reader was magnificent. I could feel him loving the words he spoke, and convincing me with every character he played.
Am I making this book sound beautiful and boring? Believe me, woven in and around all the perfect words is a wild, passion-driven story full of risks, peopled primarily by college students on all kinds of fanciful drugs. Funny? Omg. So funny. I have no idea how this writer crammed so much detailed hilarity as well as longing and suffering into a book of average length. All I’m saying is Kaveh Akbar is my new dude!
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