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Narrated by:
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Pippa Bennett-Warner
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By:
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Zadie Smith
About this listen
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
A New York Times best seller.
An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty.
Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: About rhythm and time, about Black bodies and Black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.
Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.
But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, the women dance just like Tracey - the same twists, the same shakes - and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time.
Zadie Smith's newest book, Grand Union, published in 2019.
©2016 Zadie Smith (P)2016 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
“A sweeping meditation on art, race, and identity that may be [Smith’s] most ambitious work yet.” (Esquire)
“Smith’s thrilling cultural insights never overshadow the wholeness of her characters, who are so keenly observed that one feels witness to their lives.” (O, The Oprah Magazine)
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Friends are the family we choose. When we’re going through hardships or have something to celebrate, our friends are often the people we turn to first. So much of literature, art, music, and film is dedicated to romantic love, but the love between friends can be just as (if not more) rewarding. Of course, plenty of authors "are" writing about friendship, in all its many forms. Here is our list of the very best audiobooks about friendship across genres.
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Story
The Kindred sisters—Ezra and Cinthy—have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village perched high up on coastal bluffs. But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra’s best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way.
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Powerful!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-14-23
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Perish
- A Novel
- By: LaToya Watkins
- Narrated by: Jeremy Michael Durm, Keyonni James, Chanté McCormick, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Bear it or perish yourself. Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateful night in her cousin’s outhouse that change the trajectory of her life. Spanning decades, Perish tracks the choices Helen Jean—the matriarch of the Turner family—makes and the way those choices have rippled across generations, from her children to her grandchildren and beyond. This family’s “reunion” unearths long-kept secrets and forces each member to ask themselves important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame.
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listened twice...great performance
- By Carol on 09-20-22
By: LaToya Watkins
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The Lifestyle
- A Novel
- By: Taylor Hahn
- Narrated by: Christine Lakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Georgina Wagman has it all—a great marriage, a great job at a prestigious law firm, and great friends. She’s living the life she always wanted, and everything is perfect. Until, that is, she walks in on her husband Nathan in a compromising position with a junior associate. Georgina has a moment of crisis. But divorce is not a part of the five-year plan, so she comes up with an idea to save her marriage and recapture the spark. She and Nathan are going to become swingers. Her friends Felix and Norah and their respective partners decide to tag along for the ride.
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Different
- By TC on 09-23-22
By: Taylor Hahn
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Caucasia
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie's confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents' marriage collapses.
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Wanted it to be better
- By AmyP33 on 05-27-25
By: Danzy Senna
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The Skin and Its Girl
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Cypher
- Narrated by: Victoria Nassif, Haneen Arafat Murphy
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.
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Engaging story, very well told
- By Moth77 on 05-10-25
By: Sarah Cypher
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The Queen of Hearts
- By: Kimmery Martin
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus, Catherine Taber
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
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Fantastic book!
- By steph on 02-25-18
By: Kimmery Martin
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NW
- A Novel
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Karen Bryson, Don Gilet
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Somewhere in Northwest London stands Caldwell housing estate, relic of 70s urban planning. Five identical blocks, deliberately named: Hobbes, Smith, Bentham, Locke, and Russell. If you grew up there, the plan was to get out and get on, to something bigger, better. Thirty years later ex-Caldwell kids Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan have all made it out, with varying degrees of succes - whatever that means....
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I believe this book is best listened to than read
- By BowedBookshelf on 09-28-12
By: Zadie Smith
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Pride and Protest
- By: Nikki Payne
- Narrated by: Kacie Rogers, Ron Nery Jr.
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Liza B.—the only DJ who gives a jam—wants to take her neighborhood back from the soulless property developer dropping unaffordable condos on every street corner in DC. But her planned protest at a corporate event takes a turn after she mistakes the smoldering-hot CEO for the waitstaff. When they go toe-to-toe, the sparks fly—but her impossible-to-ignore family thwarts her every move. Liza wants Dorsey Fitzgerald out of her hood, but she’ll settle for getting him out of her head.
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The CHEMISTRY
- By Kristen Killen on 09-18-23
By: Nikki Payne
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My Beloved Life
- A Novel
- By: Amitava Kumar
- Narrated by: Amitava Kumar
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’s mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. When we see Jadu again, he is in college, meeting the Sherpa who first summited Everest and wondering what it means to be modern. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places.
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Profoundly moving
- By Kani on 12-22-24
By: Amitava Kumar
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The History of a Difficult Child
- A Novel
- By: Mihret Sibhat
- Narrated by: Waceke Wambaa
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime.
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Intriguingly Unusual
- By Mule Maven on 10-07-23
By: Mihret Sibhat
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Three-Martini Lunch
- By: Suzanne Rindell
- Narrated by: Will Damron, JD Jackson, Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1958, Greenwich Village buzzes with beatniks, jazz clubs, and new ideas - the ideal spot for three ambitious young people to meet. Cliff Nelson, the son of a successful book editor, is convinced he’s the next Kerouac, if only his father would notice. Eden Katz dreams of being an editor but is shocked when she encounters roadblocks to that ambition. And Miles Tillman, a talented black writer from Harlem, seeks to learn the truth about his father’s past, finding love in the process. Though different from one another, all three share a common goal.
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WOW
- By Jordan on 05-20-17
By: Suzanne Rindell
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Are We There Yet?
- By: Kathleen West
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Alice Sullivan feels like she’s finally found her groove in middle age, but it only takes one moment for her perfectly curated life to unravel. On the same day she learns her daughter is struggling in second grade, a call from her son’s school accusing him of bullying throws Alice into a tailspin.
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Excellent narration, unlikable characters
- By Deborah on 01-24-22
By: Kathleen West
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In the Upper Country
- A Novel
- By: Kai Thomas
- Narrated by: Milton Barnes, Tymika Tafari, Wesley French
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The fates of two unforgettable women—one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life's last vital act—intertwine in this sweeping, deeply researched debut set in the Black communities of Ontario that were the last stop on the Underground Railroad. In the Upper Country weaves together unlikely stories of love, survival, and familial upheaval that map the interconnected history of the peoples of North America in an entirely new and resonant way.
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good story
- By Leo Garofalo on 04-14-24
By: Kai Thomas
Wonderful characters, no resolution -a very satisfying read
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As always Ms Smith's writing is precise, funny, heartbreaking and true.
Adored it.
Sadie Does It Again
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I really enjoyed this book
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Oh zadie
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very realistic fiction
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Enthralling and instructive. A novel of the highest caliber
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Brilliant performance, challenging story in audio
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Well written, well read
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I listen to 3-4 audio books per month and finding an interesting read is such a prize. Although at times well written and intriguing, Swing Time was not a great book. I can't recommend it.
A sandwich, where the bread is the best part
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With that said I never lost myself into it like I did with White Teeth. Perhaps it's nearly impossible to match White Teeth's achievements. Perhaps it's that I'm listening to this after Trump, the anti -immigrant, anti -refugee took office and I was hoping for the feel good inclusiveness of White Teeth. Really it's hard to judge anything because it feels like we have been thrown back into Germany in the 30's. White Teeth gave me hope for humanity. This book just left me sad, albeit with greater insight.
But, like I said, every dad feels dark and ominous since Trump got elected.
Good listen and or read just not quite as good as White Teeth
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