Secret Son
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Narrated by:
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Fajer Al-Kaisi
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By:
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Laila Lalami
About this listen
When a young man is given the chance to rewrite his future, he doesn't realize the price he will pay for giving up his past....
Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that 19-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, he dreams of escape - until, one day, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive and whisks him from the slums into the luxurious life of Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the poverty of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly unglittering reality....
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Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Accident of Birth
- By: Heather Neff
- Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Reba Freeman has loved two men in her life. Her current husband, Carl, has supported her through their 20-year marriage and given her all the material wealth a suburban wife could hope for. Reba is comfortable, if not necessarily content, in her life with Carl and their blossoming teenage daughter, Marisa, until she learns that her first love and first husband, Joseph Thomas, has been detained by the World Court of Human Rights.
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Good Listen
- By Tricia on 02-24-08
By: Heather Neff
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Secret Daughter
- By: Shilpi Somaya Gowda
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Debut novelist Shilpi Somaya Gowda pens this compelling tale about two families, worlds apart, linked by one Indian child. After giving birth to a girl for a second time, impoverished Kavita must give her up to an orphanage. The baby, named Asha, is adopted by an American doctor and raised in California. But once grown, Asha decides to return to India.
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A Must Read
- By Stephanie on 06-08-11
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The World We Found
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Good story but performance not so much!
- By Alisha on 09-13-15
By: Thrity Umrigar
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City of Spies
- By: Sorayya Khan
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Eleven-year-old Aliya Shah lives a double life in Islamabad, Pakistan - at home with her Pakistani father and Dutch mother, and at the American School, where Aliya tries to downplay that she is a "half-and-half." But when a hit-and-run driver kills the son of the family's servant, Sadiq, who is also Aliya's dear friend, her world is turned upside down. After she discovers the truth behind the tragedy - a terrible secret that burdens her heart - her conflicted loyalties are tested as never before.
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Beautifully written and narrated
- By Wayne on 11-05-17
By: Sorayya Khan
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The Other Mother
- By: Rachel Harper
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, William DeMeritt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami, who arrives at Brown University on a scholarship—but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was Jenry’s mother’s lover?
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Very good.
- By Roland Harper on 05-22-22
By: Rachel Harper
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The Wrong Sister
- By: T. E. Woods
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....
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Nothing like anything T E Woods has written B4!!!
- By shelley on 03-01-18
By: T. E. Woods
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
What listeners say about Secret Son
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- I used to fly
- 07-02-20
Loved This Story! I couldn’t put it down.
I learned about the amazing author Laila Lalami when I read a review of her earlier book “The Other Americans” in the LA Times. I was drawn to that book because I had spent some time in Morocco and the plot intrigued me. Plus I loved the beauty of the country and its rich culture. She writes and shows us about the challenges that people who are immigrants or victims of the class system and prejudices.
I looked forward to this book by her because of how impressed I was with her writing. Her next story “Secret Son” is just as compelling. Ms. Lalami is a magnificent teller of important stories.
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- Abby Mamacos
- 07-05-20
Ending catastrophically anticlimactic!
Slow start. Interesting and somewhat intriguing middle but then such an abrupt, ridiculous ending. Left me ice cold.
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- Steve
- 02-03-23
Intimate story of identity and family
Secret Son portrays the life of a young man in Casablanca slum trying to find his way. Caught between the stories of orphanhood and struggle his mother raised him on and the discovery of his real family, Youcef tries to understand who he is, versus the various roles that society asks him to play. He tries to navigate college, friendships, and life as a working man, all while balancing the opposing wishes of his family. Ultimately, his uncertainty leads him astray, and he must find a way out.
I enjoyed the multiple perspectives in this story, even in the way that some scenes were repeated to provide the interior emotional turmoil of two characters in opposite sides of a dialog. The abrupt ending and non-finality of any characters' stories were surprising, but fitting. The notions of Family, Identity, and Home don't have beginnings, middles, and ends. They are relationships an individual evolves over time that shape one's decisions and outlook, but rarely settle in one place.
Lalami captured the turmoil of family, of adolescence, and of despair amidst social stagnation in ways that many will be able to relate to. Great story.
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