
Sons and Daughters
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
About this listen
From “one of the great—if not the greatest—contemporary Yiddish novelists” (Elie Wiesel), the long-awaited English translation of a work, Tolstoyan in scope, that chronicles the last, tumultuous decade of a world succumbing to the march of modernity
“A great beard novel . . . Also a great food novel . . . A melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny . . . [Grade’s] fretful characters vibrate as if they were drawn by Roz Chast [and] Rose Waldman's translation seems miraculous to me.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“It is me the prophet laments when he cries out, ‘My enemies are the people in my own home.’” The Rabbi ignored his borscht and instead chewed on a crust of bread dipped in salt. “My greatest enemies are my own family.”
Rabbi Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen’s world, the world of his forefathers, is crumbling before his eyes. And in his own home! His eldest, Bentzion, is off in Bialystok, studying to be a businessman; his daughter Bluma Rivtcha is in Vilna, at nursing school. For her older sister, Tilza, he at least managed to find a suitable young rabbi, but he can tell things are off between them. Naftali Hertz? Forget it; he’s been lost to a philosophy degree in Switzerland (and maybe even a goyish wife?). And now the rabbi’s youngest, Refael’ke, wants to run off to the Holy Land with the Zionists.
Originally serialized in the 1960s and 1970s in New York-based Yiddish newspapers, Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters is a precious glimpse of a way of life that is no longer—the rich Yiddish culture of Poland and Lithuania that the Holocaust would eradicate. We meet the Katzenellenbogens in the tiny village of Morehdalye, in the 1930s, when gangs of Poles are beginning to boycott Jewish merchants and the modern, secular world is pressing in on the shtetl from all sides. It’s this clash, between the freethinking secular life and a life bound by religious duty—and the comforts offered by each—that stands at the center of Sons and Daughters.
With characters that rival the homespun philosophers and lovable rouges of Sholem Aleichem and I. B. Singer—from the brooding Zalia Ziskind, paralyzed by the suffering of others, to the Dostoyevskian demon Shabse Shepsel—Grade’s masterful novel brims with humanity and heartbreaking affection for a world, once full of life in all its glorious complexity, that would in just a few years vanish forever.
©2025 Chaim Grade (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A great beard novel . . . Also a great food novel . . . A melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny . . . [Grade’s] fretful characters vibrate as if they were drawn by Roz Chast. Nearly everyone is about to smack someone . . . Grade has so many gifts as a writer. Like a rabbi, he is a distributor of beneficence . . . he has folk wit as well as intellect . . . he can write about a hairy little soul with as much sensitivity as a great one. He is a custodian of traditions, yet in close, chafing contact with this flippant world . . . Rose Waldman’s translation of Sons and Daughters seems miraculous to me. The language is crisp and clean; it is also bright, like a painting that has been restored.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“[Grade’s] ambition is biblical. I don’t think the word overreaches. . . . The risk writers run when they set out to memorialize is that they’ll produce memorials, not literature. Grade didn’t do that. His novels jam almost too much life into their pages. That’s not a criticism, because the streets of prewar Jewish Eastern Europe also jostled and overflowed; Grade’s prose mimetically reproduces the way Jews thronged in their tight quarters. His major accomplishment, though, is at the level of the individual characters. They’re vortices of ambivalence, anxious and raw and at odds with themselves, hypercritical yet hypersensitive, repressed but not undersexed, subject to delusions of grandeur or abasement or both in turns. On the whole, they’re good people. They scheme and bicker and get on one another’s nerves, and yet they have deep family feeling, and few of his protagonists wholly free themselves from a yearning for contact with the divine. The dominant emotion in a Grade novel is tortured loyalty.”—Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic
“An epic, an elegy, as unfinished as the Jews, and one of the world’s great books.”—Joshua Cohen, author of The Netanyahus
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Taiwan Travelogue
- A Novel
- By: Yang Shuang-Zi, Lin King - translator
- Narrated by: Sarah Skaer
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She's been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste its authentic cuisine.
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Audiobook heavily abridged--do not buy
- By David S. on 04-17-25
By: Yang Shuang-Zi, and others
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Don't Believe Him
- By: Monica Arya
- Narrated by: Kimberly Austin
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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We had it all—a lake house, two kids, and twenty years of marriage. Except, our marriage was no longer exciting. We scheduled intimacy, ate meals in silence, and became strangers. Our kids went off to college, and we were now empty-nesters, trying to reconnect. But my husband, a psychology professor and thriller novelist, had other plans. Perhaps writing a fictional novel had him living in a false reality? Perhaps he was having a mid-life crisis? He didn't want to reconnect with me; he just wanted to replace me. Worst of all, the girl he was having an affair with was our son's girlfriend.
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Read this!
- By Shanna on 04-27-25
By: Monica Arya
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Counting Backwards
- By: Binnie Kirshenbaum
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the Manhattan streets below. Initially, Leo believes the visions are related to his terrible eyesight, something he and his wife, Addie, joke about. Then, he starts to experience occasional, but fleeting, oddities. He's unable to perform simple tasks and he hears things that aren’t real. The doctors have no answers, and his erratic disturbances multiply.
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Sharing the journey of losing a husband to young onset Lewy Body Dementia
- By Elliott Greene on 04-19-25
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The Unwanted
- A Novel
- By: Boris Fishman
- Narrated by: Youssif Kamal
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Susanna, George, and their eight-year-old daughter, Dina, have been lucky, so far, in these four years since war broke out in their country. Even as their fellow "minority-sect" neighbors and classmates are murdered or imprisoned, George’s loyal work teaching "dominant-sect" literature has kept them fed and protected. But then the day comes: the university fires George—despite his years of collaboration, he is no longer safe. Left without money or allies, it is time for the family to run.
By: Boris Fishman
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The Anatomy of Exile
- A Novel
- By: Zeeva Bukai
- Narrated by: Gilli Messer
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi's world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar's husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister's death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US.
By: Zeeva Bukai
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Twist
- A Novel
- By: Colum McCann
- Narrated by: Colum McCann
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.
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So happy he’s still writing fiction
- By Franki on 03-31-25
By: Colum McCann
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Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
- By: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Narrated by: Theodore Bikel
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These 4 stories are infused with the wit and imagination, the humor and wisdom, that characterizes all of Isaac Bashevis Singer's work. Theodore Bikel reads these wise and funny tales in classic Yiddish storyteller cadence, injecting special warmth and resonance. The tales include "Gimpel the Fool," "Esther Kreindel the Second," "The Spinoza of Market Street," and "The Black Wedding."
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Incredible narration
- By Frances on 01-10-19
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Shoestring Theory
- By: Mariana Costa
- Narrated by: Philip Battley
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The kingdom of Farsala is broken and black clouds hang heavy over the arid lands. Former grand-mage of the high court, Cyril Laverre, has spent the last decade hiding himself away in a hut by the sea, trying to catch fish for his cat familiar, Shoestring, and suppressing his guilt over the kingdom's ruin. For he played his part—for as the king, Eufrates Margrave, descended further into paranoia, violence, and madness, his grand-mage—and husband—Cyril didn't stop him.
By: Mariana Costa
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Ladies’ Lunch
- And Other Stories
- By: Lore Segal
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal, at ninety-five years old, is a national treasure. Working at the height of her powers, in this story collection she turns her gimlet eye and compassionate humor on aging and life in the slow lane. From the master of the short short comes a collection of sixteen new stories featuring old friends who have loved and lunched together for over forty years. These erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians offer startling insights into friendship, family and aging.
By: Lore Segal
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The Californians
- A Novel
- By: Brian Castleberry
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Rob Shapiro, Nancy Peterson, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 2024, and Tobey Harlan—college dropout, temporary waiter, recently dumped—steals from the wall of his father’s house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey’s just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to a notorious tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon. A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn—German-Jewish immigrant, resident of the Lower East Side—inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens.
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The Human Scale
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Tony Malik, a half-Irish, half-Arab FBI agent based in New York, specializes in tracking money from drug and arms deals. His life takes a dramatic turn when a long-term relationship ends and his job hangs in the balance. Amid personal turmoil, Malik becomes intrigued by his Palestinian father's past. He decides to visit his ancestral homeland for his niece's wedding, accepting a seemingly simple FBI assignment along the way.
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A History Lesson within a Mystery/Thriller
- By Kat on 04-20-25
By: Lawrence Wright
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Melting Point
- Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land
- By: Rachel Cockerell
- Narrated by: Henry Goodman, Rachel Cockerell
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In a highly inventive style, Cockerell captures history as it unfolds, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, and interviews into a vivid account. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York, and Jerusalem—as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history or melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past.
By: Rachel Cockerell
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Death Takes Me
- A Novel
- By: Cristina Rivera Garza, Robin Myers - translator, Sarah Booker - translator
- Narrated by: Tony Chiroldes, Lee Osorio, Ines del Castillo, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.”
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boring, long and tedious.
- By CONNIE WOODUL on 04-27-25
By: Cristina Rivera Garza, and others
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The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Elena Rey, Sophie Amoss, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
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So disappointed
- By Sarah T on 04-02-25
By: Karen Russell
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Sister Europe
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Naema, an elderly princess dedicated to her pet causes, is in a bind: struck by a malady that maroons her in Montreux, she’s unable to host an exclusive gala dinner in Berlin to honor the author Masud al-Huzeil for his lifetime achievement in Arabic literature. Not only is she unable to attend, RSVPs have been slow to materialize, and she’s reduced to begging the ancient award winner to find some attendees at the last minute. Masud invites his old friend Demian, a native Berliner, who in turn invites his two best friends.
By: Nell Zink
What listeners say about Sons and Daughters
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-02-25
Great writing/disappointing performance
The novel is both great for what it tells us about a lost world that is currently slipping from living memory. It also tells us (albeit indirectly) about the Yiddish readers who were reading it in the 1960s and 70s. But the performance was substantially sub-par. It is clear that the reader is unfamiliar with Eastern European pronunciations of Hebrew. It as a complete distraction. Admittedly, sometimes the mispronunciation we’re laugh out loud. So there was that
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-07-25
A mostly lost culture, partly preserved
There is a book called ‘ There Once Was a World’ that describes Jewish shtetl life in its myriad aspects and serves as an excellent introduction to what it was like to live in Eastern Europe in Jewish society before the Holocaust. Another book ‘The Destruction of the European Jews’ by Hilberg details the size and scope of this civilization and the events leading up to and through the murder of most of the people who formed this world. Sons and Daughters breathes life into this now mostly lost society ( bits survive in Israel the US and other places) and with a rich and nuanced mix of family, cultural conflicts and human warmth in all our love and flaws that remains rivetingly relevant for our current generations. Grade’s contemporaries, his audience during his lifetime, are gone. However his aim of opening a portal to life before the end has succeeded. This book is an emotionally, intellectually and spiritually engaging set of interlocking stories of a family that kept my attention and continues to keep me in its realm. This is the kind of book that can connect all kinds of people to the beauty and the most angst of Eastern European Jewish and related life.
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1 person found this helpful
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- ag435
- 04-30-25
Tender and thoughtful
Tender, thoughtful bittersweet novel about Jewish life and identity in small town Poland pre Holocaust.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-18-25
A compelling picture of a lost world
Be sure to listen to the translator’s note at the end. There is an outline of an ending.
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- Sarah ozacky
- 04-29-25
Unforgettable book
A jewish masterpiece on time lost. A wonderful saga on a family living in Poland in the 1930’s before the complete distraction of this world. Witten with love and criticism, a work of literary art reminding the great Russian authors. Professional translation and great narration (wish he would have pronounced the Hebrew words more accurately) but this is my only comment. I have listened to this book for over 3 weeks is a raw and did not want it to end. The story of my unknown ancestors. A memorial to a world no more exists
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