Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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James Chen
About this listen
Winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature
Mo Yan, China’s most critically acclaimed author, has changed the face of his country’s contemporary literature with such daring and masterly novels as Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads, and The Republic of Wine. In this collection of eight astonishing stories - the title story of which has been adapted to film by the award-winning director of Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou - Mo Yan shows why he is also China’s leading writer of short fiction.
His passion for writing shaped by his own experience of almost unimaginable poverty as a child, Mo Yan uses his talent to expose the harsh abuses of an oppressive society. In these stories he writes of those who suffer, physically and spiritually, under its yoke: the newly unemployed factory worker who hits upon an ingenious financial opportunity; two former lovers revisiting their passion fleetingly before returning to their spouses; young couples willing to pay for a place to share their love in private; the abandoned baby brought home by a soldier to his unsympathetic wife; the impoverished child who must subsist on a diet of iron and steel; the young bride willing to go to any length to escape an odious, arranged marriage. Never didactic, Mo’s fiction ranges from tragedy to wicked satire, rage to whimsy, magical fable to harsh realism, from impassioned pleas on behalf of struggling workers to paeans to romantic love.
©2001, 2011 Mo Yan. Translation copyright 2001, 2011 by Howard Goldblatt (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Alexandra Fuller
- Narrated by: Lisette Lecat
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.
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Astonishing
- By G. Robinson on 06-27-04
By: Alexandra Fuller
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The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm
- By: Nancy Farmer
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Zimbabwe, 2194. General Matsika's three children sneak out of the house on a forbidden adventure and disappear. Immediately,the general calls Africa's most unusual detectives: the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Together these three detectives combine their superhuman powers to find the missing children. It's a dangerous mission that leads them from the seedy streets of the Cow's Guts to the swaying top of the Mile-High MacIlwaine Hotel.
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Amazing premise, decent execution
- By David Hoffman on 01-23-16
By: Nancy Farmer
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The Canal Bridge
- A Novel of Ireland, Love, and the First World War
- By: Tom Phelan
- Narrated by: Paul Nugent
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1913, before there is a rumor of war in Europe, Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel, lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands, decide to see the world at the expense of the king of England and join the British army. A year later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they soon find themselves in the European slaughterhouse that was World War I.
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Beautiful, disturbing and unforgettable
- By Kathy on 05-25-16
By: Tom Phelan
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Mr. Shivers
- By: Robert Jackson Bennett
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Jackson Bennett makes a stunning debut with this deliciously dark tale sure to hold readers in its menacing thrall. The grinding poverty brought on by the Great Depression is nowhere more apparent than in the untold thousands looking for work along America’s railroad system. But one man haunting the rail camps has been moved by an entirely different brand of desperation: revenge.
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From the Cormac McCarthy Playbook
- By J. Cons on 08-09-10
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Thousand Pieces of Gold
- By: Ruthanne Lum McCunn
- Narrated by: Emily Zeller
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Lalu Nathoy's father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his "thousand pieces of gold," yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. This biographical novel is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for independence and dignity in the American West.
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Disjointed account of an extraordinary life
- By David on 05-01-15
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The October Country
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunting, harrowing, and downright horrifying, this classic collection from the modern master of the fantastic features: "The Small Assassin": a fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true - or her nightmare.... "The Emissary": the faithful dog was the sick boy's only connection with the world outside - and beyond.... "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone": a most remarkable case of murder - the deceased was delighted! And more!
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The October Country
- By steven richard pohl on 09-17-19
By: Ray Bradbury
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First They Killed My Father
- A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
- By: Loung Ung
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
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Brutal, Heartbreaking
- By Gillian on 01-27-15
By: Loung Ung
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White Dog Fell from the Sky
- By: Eleanor Morse
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Botswana, 1976: Isaac Muthethe thinks he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.
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Unexpectedly Stunning Work!
- By Kathi on 03-15-13
By: Eleanor Morse
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The Accusation
- Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea
- By: Bandi
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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The Accusation is a deeply moving and eye-opening work of fiction that paints a powerful portrait of life under the North Korean regime. Set during the period of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation give voice to people living under this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. The characters of these compelling stories come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
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Incredibly powerful
- By Margaret on 09-30-19
By: Bandi
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Molly Moon's Hypnotic Time Travel Adventure
- By: Georgia Byng
- Narrated by: Clare Higgins
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Molly Moon returns...and bumps into earlier versions of herself, four of them, to be exact, all kidnapped and transported back in time to nineteenth-century India by Molly's most fearsome nemesis yet, an insane maharaja. Molly foiled his plans once already, by stopping Primo Cell from becoming president of the United States. This time around, the maharaja is determined to alter the course of history. The only thing standing in his way is Molly and her brave pug, Petula.
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Boring
- By Burt Johnson on 12-30-13
By: Georgia Byng
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Walk In My Soul
- By: Lucia St. Clair Robson
- Narrated by: Laurie Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.
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i honestly don't know what is going in this book
- By Bryntainia Holloway on 09-21-19