The Arsonists' City
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Narrated by:
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Leila Buck
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By:
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Hala Alyan
About this listen
“The Arsonists’ City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan’s hands, one family’s tale becomes the story of a nation - Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States. It’s the kind of book we are lucky to have.” (Rumaan Alam)
A rich family story, a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East, and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home
The Nasr family is spread across the globe - Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut - a constant touchstone - and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell.
The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets - lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame - that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together.
In a novel teeming with wisdom, warmth, and characters born of remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us again that “fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us” (NPR).
©2021 Hala Alyan (P)2021 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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A Palestinian Family in Exile
- By zaina on 08-25-17
By: Hala Alyan
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The Twenty-Ninth Year
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For Hala Alyan, 29 is a year of transformation and upheaval, a year in which the past - memories of family members, old friends and past lovers, the heat of another land, another language, a different faith - winds itself around the present. Hala's ever-shifting, subversive verse sifts together and through different forms of forced displacement and the tolls they take on mind and body. Poems leap from war-torn cities in the Middle East, to an Oklahoma Olive Garden, a Brooklyn brownstone; from alcoholism to recovery; from a single woman to a wife.
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So vivid and evoking.
- By @booksandbreath on 01-01-24
By: Hala Alyan
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The Moon That Turns You Back
- Poems
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 1 hr and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form—small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement.
By: Hala Alyan
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Recognizing the Stranger
- On Palestine and Narrative
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University nine days before October 7th, 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history. Profound and moving, Hammad writes from within the moment, shedding light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
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Not that insightful
- By LitCrit on 12-07-24
By: Isabella Hammad
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You’re Not a Girl in a Movie
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 34 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
You’re Not a Girl in a Movie is a new collection of powerful poems by Hala Alyan, winner of the Arab American Book Award in Poetry and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In these nine extraordinary poems, Alyan wrestles with the intimate themes that have driven her acclaimed body of work to date: the aching loss of homeland, the image and worth of women, and the violence of love. In Beirut, Brooklyn, and roads in the American West, she unravels the effects of decades of war and displacement on love and human worth and identity.
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I am going to have to listen again...
- By James on 12-23-20
By: Hala Alyan
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Sparks Like Stars
- A Novel
- By: Nadia Hashimi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.
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Amazing
- By Lisa on 03-26-21
By: Nadia Hashimi
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Salt Houses
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Leila Buck
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.
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A Palestinian Family in Exile
- By zaina on 08-25-17
By: Hala Alyan
-
The Twenty-Ninth Year
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Hala Alyan, 29 is a year of transformation and upheaval, a year in which the past - memories of family members, old friends and past lovers, the heat of another land, another language, a different faith - winds itself around the present. Hala's ever-shifting, subversive verse sifts together and through different forms of forced displacement and the tolls they take on mind and body. Poems leap from war-torn cities in the Middle East, to an Oklahoma Olive Garden, a Brooklyn brownstone; from alcoholism to recovery; from a single woman to a wife.
-
-
So vivid and evoking.
- By @booksandbreath on 01-01-24
By: Hala Alyan
-
The Moon That Turns You Back
- Poems
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 1 hr and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form—small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement.
By: Hala Alyan
-
Recognizing the Stranger
- On Palestine and Narrative
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Isabella Hammad
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University nine days before October 7th, 2023. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history. Profound and moving, Hammad writes from within the moment, shedding light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
-
-
Not that insightful
- By LitCrit on 12-07-24
By: Isabella Hammad
-
You’re Not a Girl in a Movie
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Hala Alyan
- Length: 34 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You’re Not a Girl in a Movie is a new collection of powerful poems by Hala Alyan, winner of the Arab American Book Award in Poetry and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In these nine extraordinary poems, Alyan wrestles with the intimate themes that have driven her acclaimed body of work to date: the aching loss of homeland, the image and worth of women, and the violence of love. In Beirut, Brooklyn, and roads in the American West, she unravels the effects of decades of war and displacement on love and human worth and identity.
-
-
I am going to have to listen again...
- By James on 12-23-20
By: Hala Alyan
-
Sparks Like Stars
- A Novel
- By: Nadia Hashimi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.
-
-
Amazing
- By Lisa on 03-26-21
By: Nadia Hashimi
What listeners say about The Arsonists' City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nichole
- 05-07-21
All the feels
I loved this book. Having lived in Beirut, it felt true to me, like I'd met each of the characters before. It's a beautiful story of love, trauma, grief, family, and identity.
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- Jeannette K. Dalton
- 09-07-24
Family dynamics and internal struggle
Story of family dynamics, and struggles. It took me a while to get into the book and learn all the characters, but totally worth it. Also explores themes of “what is home?” - “what does it mean to return home?” - “What does it mean to be in exile? An immigrant?”
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- Kindle Customer
- 05-07-22
amazing
The performance is actually a 10/5 its insane how talented the voice actor is. This was my favorite book of 2021 out of the 50/60 books I read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- N. Diab
- 02-11-22
Fun listen but unnecessarily too long
Very entertaining read. Goes by fast, but too long. The story is relatively common. The author put every social issue in one book, she could’ve concentrate on one or too issues instead every issue. Camps, war, Syrian-Lebanese conflict, lesbianism, immigration, discrimination ( brown skin)etc…
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- Emile Kfouri
- 01-26-22
The most Exquisite book I have ever listened to
You must listen to this book - it is perfect in every way. As a Lebanese American fluent in both languages and cultures I can not think of a more authentic story. Capturing our story. Lebanon, the war, America our adopted country, all recounted with such love and respect. Leila's reading of the book is a master class in how to bring a book to life. Her account: perfect! Her tone and cadence: perfect. There were times she brought me to tears because I could hear my relatives talking, I could smell the city, I could feel the pain and joy of being a Lebanese American and all that means. Thank you so much to Hala and Leila. Chukran!
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- Taryn Hoppes
- 04-25-24
I cried... I laughed... I felt... I learned.
This a deep rooted story of love, strength, and perspective. Read it. I want more.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-25-21
Couldn’t finish it
I really wanted to like this book, but the descriptions about every little situation with each character felt never ending. I listened for hours and nothing had really happened, I didn’t get to the Beirut part. If you like a lot of description and stories with multiple characters and family dynamics you’ll enjoy it. The start was captivating and quick paced and beautifully written, but sadly my interest kept fading as the stories in the present moment kept dragging.
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