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My Friends
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Hisham Matar
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By:
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Hisham Matar
About this listen
A “masterly” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice), “riveting” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Booker Prize-nominated and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return.
“A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.” (The Washington Post)
A luminous novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Booker Prize-nominated and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return.
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. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode into tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, unable to leave Britain, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would expose them to danger.
When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face-to-face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.
A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author working at the peak of his powers.
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About the Creator and Performer
Critic reviews
“It is impossible to describe the profound depth and beauty of this book. My Friends is a breathtaking novel, every page a miracle and an affirmation.” (Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King)
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When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He'd ride up on his white steed and break the curse I've been fated to carry since the day I was born. Funny how things changed over time, how the fairytale twisted into something far more crooked—and darker—than I ever imagined. In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was.
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5 STARS
- By AudioObsessed on 03-12-23
By: Keri Lake
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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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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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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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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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Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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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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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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Performance
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Story
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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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
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5 Stars!
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Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
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Would give six stars if possible
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
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5 Stars!
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Deeply moving
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Would give six stars if possible
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Beautiful. Unexpected.
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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.
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One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
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A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter - radicalized by the online alt-right - attacks the school.
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wonderful read!
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Beautiful writing unique story, might relisten to parts
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Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
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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
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Question 7
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By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.
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The emotional honesty and careful description of events.
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My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird
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A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet. A tormented girl tries to find love through a horrific act. A headmaster makes his way to work, treading the fine line between life and death. These and more original, vital, and unexpected stories hail from extraordinary voices rooted in Afghanistan's two main linguistic groups (Pashto and Dari), and were developed over two years through the writer development program Untold's Write Aghanistan Project.
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Absolutely outstanding
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What listeners say about My Friends
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ncnickle
- 02-02-25
Beautiful Writing but A Bit Flat in Storyline/historical context
This novel is beautifully written. The first half of it really drew me in. The MC half heartedly attends a protest with a friend and things go bad from there, permanently bonding the friends. From there it does begin to meander and become repetitive. I wish more had been explored about the history of the region and not as much intellectualizing over the MC thoughts/feelings. There’s a very subdued writing style throughout that is lovely but can feel flat at times. With that being said, I do recommend you read/listen to it. I enjoyed the narration.
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- Coco likes books
- 02-22-24
Paints a very vivid picture
My Friends has a great deal of interesting, and insightful history about modern Libya and the destruction that Colonial Gaddafi did to the minds, bodies and souls of the Libyan people during his brutal dictatorship. However, the book also examines many other issues in great depth with the authors beautiful prose. The nature of friendship and what makes it last. What being a refugee with no way to go home does to a person’s identity and soul. How the idea of “home” can mean many different things. I thought this was an excellent listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Vly Summit
- 05-19-24
A beautiful book
Full of the sense of time passing in the life of the narrator and his friends. A short course in Libyan history and culture given in the best way, through the persona of the narrator. Exile's sadness and security measures by the heart. Wonderful!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tommy
- 09-03-24
Interesting and Complex Protagonist
Wonderful story about the life of a man who left Libya for college and then couldn’t go back for 30+ years because of Muammar Gaddafi and his regime. You get to know Khaled so well and you really like him in his fears and imperfections. He could be anyone.
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- Rachel Dyer
- 02-19-24
Quality of the writing
Beautifully narrated, powerful subject matter and very beautiful writing.Any book by this author is worth every minute.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 06-24-24
Beautifully written
What gorgeous writing and beautiful storytelling. I loved it and will highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates a thought provoking, heart- wrenching story.
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- Zavanna
- 09-15-24
Beautiful prose
The author is extremely gifted in describing and developing characters, emotions, and the human condition. I found myself relistening to many such passages, hoping to absorb their simple cadence and beauty. I kept thinking Wow. .how does he know that?To have a mind that can put words together so perfectly as to touch your soul is such a gift. The story itself is slow in building, so if you like a fast paced, lots of action type of read you won't like this. But if you enjoy a deeply felt story with the characters woven into and around each other, I think you'll enjoy this very much.
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- Laura M
- 11-26-24
Powerful
This is a beautiful, powerful story. Hisham Matar’s reading is propulsive. It gave me a lot to think about, and I was grateful for the learning about events that I have struggled to understand with all my lack of context.
About halfway through, there is an incident where the narrator goes to a prostitute for company, has an awkward encounter, and leaves, saying “I should’ve ****ed her.” This brief dip into misogyny is never examined. I kept waiting, and it didn’t happen. So while I wanted to love this book, from about halfway through I felt like there was a hole in the text, and I felt alienated from the narrator, suspicious of how he sees my kind, whether he only cares about middle- and upper-class women, etc. I read to the end with this element of unease. It’s not that the event would be unredeemable, but that it is never examined.
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- Arabella
- 01-03-25
Sensitive Portrayal of Friendships in Exile
Hisham Matar reads his own novel in his soft, intelligent voice. A bittersweet chronicle of friendships, exile, love of country, and more. You wish you were his friend.
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- Marsha W
- 10-21-24
One of my favorites ever
I loved the topic, the writing, the reading, the structure, and the authors beautiful mind.
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1 person found this helpful