-
Memory of Departure
- Narrated by: Faaiz Mbelizi
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 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 $15.27
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Bloomsbury presents Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah, read by Faaiz Mbelizi.
The debut novel by the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature
Vehement, comic and shrewd, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel is an unwavering contemplation of East African coastal life
Poverty and depravity wreak havoc on Hassan Omar’s family. Amid great hardship he decides to escape.
The arrival of independence brings new upheavals as well as the betrayal of the promise of freedom. The new government, fearful of an exodus of its most able men, discourages young people from travelling abroad and refuses to release examination results. Deprived of a scholarship, Hassan travels to Nairobi to stay with a wealthy uncle, in the hope that he will release his mother’s rightful share of the family inheritance.
The collision of past secrets and future hopes, the compound of fear and frustration, beauty and brutality, create a fierce tale of undeniable power.
____________________
‘Gurnah is a master storyteller' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Exile has given Gurnah a perspective on the “balance between things” that is astonishing, superb' OBSERVER
'A captivating storyteller' GUARDIAN
'Gurnah etches with biting incisiveness the experiences of immigrants exposed to contempt, hostility or patronising indifference on their arrival in Britain' SPECTATOR
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Afterlives
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of East Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya.
-
-
A Compelling book in every way
- By Edward Hower on 11-03-22
-
Dottie
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Isabel Adomakoh Young
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace amidst the squalor of her childhood by spinning warm tales of affection about her beautiful names. But she knows nothing of their origins, and little of her family history—or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain. At seventeen, she takes on the burden of responsibility for her brother and sister and is obsessed with keeping the family together. However, as Sophie, lumpen yet voluptuous, drifts away, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into the world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs.
-
By the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Connie Mgadzah, Denver Isaac
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession—a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, silence his only protection.
-
-
beautifully written and read
- By ana teresa blank on 03-30-24
-
Desertion
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writing at the peak of his powers, Abdulrazak Gurnah gives us in Desertion a spellbinding novel of forbidden love and cultural upheaval, with consequences powerfully reverberating through three generations and across continents—from the heyday of the British empire to the aftermath of African independence.
-
Gravel Heart
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salim has always known that his father does not want him. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, he is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors. It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. Tourists arrive, the island’s white sands obscuring the memory of recent conflict—the longed-for independence from British colonialism swiftly followed by bloody revolution. When his father moves out, retreating into dishevelled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change.
-
-
So enjoyed this!
- By S. Z. Sykes on 04-26-24
-
Paradise
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough” work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boy’s coming-of-age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of African tradition by European colonialism.
-
-
East African pre-colonual history from the inside out
- By Nzingha on 03-08-24
-
Afterlives
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of East Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya.
-
-
A Compelling book in every way
- By Edward Hower on 11-03-22
-
Dottie
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Isabel Adomakoh Young
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour finds solace amidst the squalor of her childhood by spinning warm tales of affection about her beautiful names. But she knows nothing of their origins, and little of her family history—or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain. At seventeen, she takes on the burden of responsibility for her brother and sister and is obsessed with keeping the family together. However, as Sophie, lumpen yet voluptuous, drifts away, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into the world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs.
-
By the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Connie Mgadzah, Denver Isaac
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession—a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, silence his only protection.
-
-
beautifully written and read
- By ana teresa blank on 03-30-24
-
Desertion
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writing at the peak of his powers, Abdulrazak Gurnah gives us in Desertion a spellbinding novel of forbidden love and cultural upheaval, with consequences powerfully reverberating through three generations and across continents—from the heyday of the British empire to the aftermath of African independence.
-
Gravel Heart
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salim has always known that his father does not want him. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, he is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors. It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. Tourists arrive, the island’s white sands obscuring the memory of recent conflict—the longed-for independence from British colonialism swiftly followed by bloody revolution. When his father moves out, retreating into dishevelled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change.
-
-
So enjoyed this!
- By S. Z. Sykes on 04-26-24
-
Paradise
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, Paradise was characterized by the Nobel Prize committee as Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “breakthrough” work. It is at once the chronicle of an African boy’s coming-of-age, a tragic love story, and a tale of the corruption of African tradition by European colonialism.
-
-
East African pre-colonual history from the inside out
- By Nzingha on 03-08-24
-
Admiring Silence
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He thinks, as he escapes from Zanzibar, that he will probably never return, and yet the dream of studying in England matters above that. Things do not happen quite as he imagined—the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, he forgets how it feels to belong. But there is Emma, beautiful, rebellious Emma, who turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child. And in return, he spins stories of his home and keeps her a secret from his family. Twenty years later, the barriers come down in Zanzibar and he is able and compelled to go back.
-
-
WOW. Fantastic book; perfect narrator
- By MAJ_lawyer on 05-01-23
-
Let Us Descend
- A Novel
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Jesmyn Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is “[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours” (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
-
-
Usually I enjoy an author reading…
- By Patio on 11-04-23
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
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
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a 13-year-old houseboy working for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who's abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
-
-
A Little Background Adjustment
- By Perkbrooke on 03-13-18
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World
- By: Robert Garland, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Robert Garland
- Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.
-
-
Tantalizing time trip
- By Mark on 08-21-13
By: Robert Garland, and others
-
Victory City
- A Novel
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Rushdie never fails to engage.
- By Tom on 02-23-23
By: Salman Rushdie
Critic reviews
"Gurnah writes with wonderful insight about family relationships and he folds in the layers of history with elegance and warmth." (The Times)
Related to this topic
-
The Space Between Us
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
-
-
A Story that stays with you
- By gardener97 on 04-25-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
-
Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
-
-
Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
-
Augustown
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Dona Croll
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.
-
-
SUPERB
- By ** on 06-25-17
By: Kei Miller
-
A House for Mr. Biswas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
-
-
Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
- By Christopher on 01-04-19
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
-
-
Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
-
The Space Between Us
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author Thrity Umrigar won the Nieman Fellowship and earned a finalist spot for the PEN/Beyond Margins award with The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in life, the two women share bonds of womanhood that prove far stronger than the divisions of class or culture.
-
-
A Story that stays with you
- By gardener97 on 04-25-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
-
Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
-
-
Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
-
Augustown
- By: Kei Miller
- Narrated by: Dona Croll
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ma Taffy may be blind, but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do.
-
-
SUPERB
- By ** on 06-25-17
By: Kei Miller
-
A House for Mr. Biswas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
-
-
Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
- By Christopher on 01-04-19
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
-
-
Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
-
The World We Found
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Best-selling author and PEN and Beyond Margins Award finalist Thrity Umrigar’s acclaimed novels “resonate with rich prose and vibrant depictions of India” ( Booklist). In The World We Found, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta - once friends at the University of Bombay - reconnect 30 years later when Armaiti is diagnosed with cancer. Coming together, all four women are forced to reexamine their lives.
-
-
Good story but performance not so much!
- By Alisha on 09-13-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
-
When the Moon Is Low
- A Novel
- By: Nadia Hashimi
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Neil Shah
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mahmoud’s passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness.
-
-
Good story. Poor ending
- By Janine on 01-14-22
By: Nadia Hashimi
-
Wife of the Gods
- A Novel
- By: Kwei Quartey
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Detective Inspector Darko Dawson, a good family man and a remarkably intuitive sleuth, is sent to the village of Ketanu---the site of his mother's disappearance many years ago---to solve the murder of an accomplished young AIDS worker. While battling his own anger issues and concerns for his ailing son, Darko explores the motivations and secrets of the residents of Ketanu.
-
-
Engrossing Mystery in a Fascinating Setting
- By Tracey Rains on 04-19-10
By: Kwei Quartey
-
The Invisible Wall
- A Love Story That Broke Barriers
- By: Harry Bernstein
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This enchanting true story, written when the author was 93, is a moving tale of working-class life, the social divide, and forbidden love on the eve of the first World War. The narrow street on which Harry grew up appeared identical to countless other working-class English neighborhoods, except for the invisible wall that ran down the center of the street, dividing the Jewish families on one side from the Christians on the other.
-
-
A Powerful Tale
- By Sara on 11-29-13
By: Harry Bernstein
-
Duet
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the London pop scene, to the opera stages of Europe; from a tiny Greek island, to a stifling manor house full of secrets and deceptions; from the sun-drenched Queensland coast, to the silent outback; Angela and Ellie are two women both looking for something. One in search of her identity and her memory; the other in search of the love that she had and lost; theirs is a duet whose last note will not be sung until the heart-stopping climax, when a shadow from the past returns to claim them both.
-
-
Gosh that was a great story!
- By Anonymous User on 06-10-09
-
Winter Journey
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.
-
-
Historical Story Marred by Unnecessary Fluff
- By Debbie on 11-30-15
By: Diane Armstrong
-
Going to Meet the Man
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.
-
-
Punch in the gut
- By Rebecca on 05-08-17
By: James Baldwin
-
Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
-
-
One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
-
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Deborah Moggach
- Narrated by: Juliet Mills
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, reaches the breaking point with his difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: “Can’t we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away.” His prayer is seemingly answered when Ravi’s entrepreneurial cousin sets up a retirement home in India, hoping to re-create in Bangalore an elegant lost corner of England. Several retirees are enticed by the promise of indulgent living at a bargain price, but upon arriving, they are dismayed to find that restoration of the once sophisiticated hotel has stalled....
-
-
Screenwriters Changed it for the Better
- By Carole T. on 06-05-12
By: Deborah Moggach
-
Lavender Road
- By: Helen Carey
- Narrated by: Annie Aldington
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lavender Road boasts a pawnbroker, a pub, two rows of terraced working class homes, and, at one end, the big house owned by the local brewer. When war breaks out, the lives and fortunes of the families who live in Lavender Road are changed out of all recognition.
-
-
Great story with wonderful, believable characters!
- By Kathleen Bailey on 03-27-24
By: Helen Carey
-
The Orphan Keeper
- By: Camron Wright
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seven-year-old Chellamuthu's life - and his destiny - is forever changed when he is kidnapped from his village in Southern India and sold to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children. His family is desperate to find him, and Chellamuthu anxiously tells the Indian orphanage that he is not an orphan, he has a mother who loves him. But he is told not to worry, he will soon be adopted by a loving family in America.
-
-
5 Star Worthy
- By Kari on 10-26-16
By: Camron Wright
-
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad. Monique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of post-colonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy. When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
What listeners say about Memory of Departure
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeanette Karimi
- 01-16-23
#readrazakchallenge
The first chapter was a lot- very vulgar, disgusting, disturbing and raw. It’s my first time reading any of Abdulrazak’s work and I was thrown a back by how his writing is especially in that first chapter. He’s very raw, forthright and inhibited.
Once I got over the shock, I enjoyed the rest of the book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Frank Donnelly
- 10-03-22
Excellent, An Early Novel of A Nobel Prize Recipient
This is a first novel of eventual Nobel Prize recipient Abdulrazak Gurnah. It is about a young man living in Africa and coming of age and pondering his future. It is not lengthy. It is very well written. I enjoyed it very much. As an audiobook the narration is excellent. However I did read along an actual book due to particular names and locations that were difficult for me. I intend to read more of this author in the future. Thank You…
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!