The Committed
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $25.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Francois Chau
About this listen
The long-awaited new novel from one of America’s most highly regarded contemporary writers, The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.
Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition. The Sympathizer will need all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to prevail.
Both literary thriller and novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen’s position in the firmament of American letters.
This audiobook is a sequel to The Sympathizer.
Copyright © 2021 by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. Epigraph by Rithy Panh with Christophe Bataille, excerpted from The Elimination, translated by John Cullen. Copyright © 2014 by Rithy Panh. Reprinted by permission of Other Press. “Seasons in the Sun.” Written by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen. Published by Edward B. Marks Music Company (BMI). All rights administered by Round Hill Carlin, LLC. “Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi.” Words and Music by Jacques Dutronc and Jacques Lanzmann. Copyright (c) 1966 Alpha Editions Musicales. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
©2021 (see above) (P)2021 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Refugees
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.
-
-
Good collection of short stories
- By Thomas More on 03-19-17
-
The Displaced
- Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen - editor
- Narrated by: Greta Jung, Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience.
-
A Man of Two Faces
- A Memoir, a History, a Memorial
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
-
-
If you don't like coddled, cry-babies, then avoid
- By Wayne A. Curto on 12-30-23
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Nothing Ever Dies
- Vietnam and the Memory of War
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes. All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the best-selling novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both the Americans and the Vietnamese.
-
-
Good, probably should be read and not listened to via audible for the best experience.
- By Tanya on 10-24-16
-
The Refugees
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.
-
-
Good collection of short stories
- By Thomas More on 03-19-17
-
The Displaced
- Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen - editor
- Narrated by: Greta Jung, Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience.
-
A Man of Two Faces
- A Memoir, a History, a Memorial
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
-
-
If you don't like coddled, cry-babies, then avoid
- By Wayne A. Curto on 12-30-23
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Nothing Ever Dies
- Vietnam and the Memory of War
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes. All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the best-selling novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both the Americans and the Vietnamese.
-
-
Good, probably should be read and not listened to via audible for the best experience.
- By Tanya on 10-24-16
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
-
Best Read/Listen on Audible
- By Henry Posner on 09-22-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Orphan Master's Son
- A Novel
- By: Adam Johnson
- Narrated by: Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, James Kyson Lee, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother - a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang - and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.
-
-
The most compelling listen I've ever owned
- By Lisa on 01-27-12
By: Adam Johnson
-
The Remains of the Day
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
-
-
Beautiful and ever relevant
- By bbots on 07-04-20
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
-
-
Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Eat a Peach
- A Memoir
- By: David Chang, Gabe Ulla
- Narrated by: David Chang
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious—an intimate account of the making of a chef, the story of the modern restaurant world that he helped shape, and how he discovered that success can be much harder to understand than failure. Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles David Chang’s switchback path. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry’s history of brutishness and its uncertain future.
-
-
So many threads coming into a wonderful tapstery.
- By Suzie on 09-12-20
By: David Chang, and others
-
The Night Watchman
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, DC, this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Melanie on 03-09-20
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Babel
- Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 21 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
-
-
The novel language lovers have been waiting for
- By LisaLee on 09-06-22
By: R. F. Kuang
-
Killing Commendatore
- A Novel
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator, Ted Goossen - translator
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 28 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Killing Commendatore, a 30-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna.
-
-
A Masterpiece and A Good Novel To Start
- By Elif Kaya on 10-18-18
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
Related to this topic
-
The Grand Dark
- By: Richard Kadrey
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of the Sandman Slim series, a lush, dark, stand-alone fantasy built off the insurgent tradition of China Mieville and M. John Harrison - a subversive tale that immerses us in a world where the extremes of bleakness and beauty exist together in dangerous harmony in a city on the edge of civility and chaos. The Great War is over. The city of Lower Proszawa celebrates the peace with a decadence and carefree spirit as intense as the war’s horrifying despair.
-
-
Kadrey does it again!
- By Lilah Quinn on 06-14-19
By: Richard Kadrey
-
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions
- Auntie Poldi, Book 1
- By: Mario Giordano
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Auntie Poldi can think of no finer place to wait for death than Sicily. All she asks is a sea view, fine wine (and plenty of it), and her family close around. When death instead takes her handsome young friend Valentino - and under mysterious circumstances at that - Poldi will not take it lying down. Perhaps it's in her blood, but Auntie Poldi's hunting instincts have never felt more alive. Justice must be served - if it's the last thing she does....
-
-
More fun and murder in Sicily!
- By MolllyT on 02-19-18
By: Mario Giordano
-
Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
-
-
A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
-
Demon Master
- The Demon Master Series, Book 1
- By: Daniel Pierce
- Narrated by: Leo Barnabas
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a seductive demon begins using her evil daughters to kill tourists, Ring Hardigan will use his knife, his two girlfriends, and his wits to find the elusive beast and put a blade in her. Through clues and the story of a man claiming to be the demon’s father, the hunters become the hunted - and everyone around them is at risk from Elizabeth and her bloodthirsty family. As a hurricane bears down on the beaches, the demon hunters will finally get what they’ve been wanting all along: blood. But whose will it be? Theirs or the demon’s?
-
-
PG13 harem if one can call it a harem.
- By Jay on 08-27-19
By: Daniel Pierce
-
Proof of Life
- Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East
- By: Daniel Levin
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days.
-
-
Gripping and intriguing
- By Domenica Antonini on 11-10-24
By: Daniel Levin
-
The Grand Dark
- By: Richard Kadrey
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of the Sandman Slim series, a lush, dark, stand-alone fantasy built off the insurgent tradition of China Mieville and M. John Harrison - a subversive tale that immerses us in a world where the extremes of bleakness and beauty exist together in dangerous harmony in a city on the edge of civility and chaos. The Great War is over. The city of Lower Proszawa celebrates the peace with a decadence and carefree spirit as intense as the war’s horrifying despair.
-
-
Kadrey does it again!
- By Lilah Quinn on 06-14-19
By: Richard Kadrey
-
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions
- Auntie Poldi, Book 1
- By: Mario Giordano
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Auntie Poldi can think of no finer place to wait for death than Sicily. All she asks is a sea view, fine wine (and plenty of it), and her family close around. When death instead takes her handsome young friend Valentino - and under mysterious circumstances at that - Poldi will not take it lying down. Perhaps it's in her blood, but Auntie Poldi's hunting instincts have never felt more alive. Justice must be served - if it's the last thing she does....
-
-
More fun and murder in Sicily!
- By MolllyT on 02-19-18
By: Mario Giordano
-
Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
-
-
A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
-
Demon Master
- The Demon Master Series, Book 1
- By: Daniel Pierce
- Narrated by: Leo Barnabas
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a seductive demon begins using her evil daughters to kill tourists, Ring Hardigan will use his knife, his two girlfriends, and his wits to find the elusive beast and put a blade in her. Through clues and the story of a man claiming to be the demon’s father, the hunters become the hunted - and everyone around them is at risk from Elizabeth and her bloodthirsty family. As a hurricane bears down on the beaches, the demon hunters will finally get what they’ve been wanting all along: blood. But whose will it be? Theirs or the demon’s?
-
-
PG13 harem if one can call it a harem.
- By Jay on 08-27-19
By: Daniel Pierce
-
Proof of Life
- Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East
- By: Daniel Levin
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daniel Levin was at his office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a missing person in Syria over twenty tense days.
-
-
Gripping and intriguing
- By Domenica Antonini on 11-10-24
By: Daniel Levin
-
Myra Breckinridge
- A Novel (Myra and Myron, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal, Camille Paglia - introduction
- Narrated by: Michelle Hendley, Camille Paglia
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent, Myra's moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.
-
-
Well performed
- By Kenny D on 06-08-19
By: Gore Vidal, and others
-
Fellowship of Fear
- Gideon Oliver Mysteries Series, Book 1
- By: Aaron Elkins
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention - such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends.
-
-
Painful
- By Christine M. on 07-14-19
By: Aaron Elkins
-
A Most Clever Girl
- A Novel of an American Spy
- By: Stephanie Marie Thornton
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year 1963: Reeling from the death of her mother and President Kennedy’s assassination, Catherine Gray shows up on Elizabeth Bentley’s doorstep demanding answers to the shocking mystery she just uncovered about her family. What she doesn’t expect is for Bentley to ensnare her in her own story of becoming a controversial World War II spy and Cold War informer.
-
-
Loved it
- By Jasper Van Wyk on 10-20-21
-
Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
-
-
Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
-
Life for Sale
- By: Yukio Mishima
- Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots - even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the crosshairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate.
-
-
Book is good - Narration is just terrible
- By Vyacheslav Varlakov on 03-12-21
By: Yukio Mishima
-
Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching—yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.
-
-
How Did This Escape Me?
- By E. Pearson on 11-23-11
By: Ralph Ellison
-
Rhapsody
- The Butcher and the Violinist, Book 1
- By: Kenya Wright
- Narrated by: Blake Stanton, Cami Darian
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jean-Pierre’s greatest gift was a lack of feelings. His past had ripped them away. But then he saw Eden. Onstage, she played her violin, spinning his head with songs he’d tried to forget. Unable to stop himself, he makes Eden his obsession. And unlike any normal man, he takes what he wants. But there’s someone in the shadows blocking his path. His plans for Eden won’t be so simple. This mystery person sends Russians his way, igniting a war with the Bratva. It’s too bad that there’s no limit to his obsession for her - no force that can stop him, no bullet to get in his way.
-
-
Best Narrators, straight Sexy + worth while story
- By Lawanda G. on 10-30-19
By: Kenya Wright
-
The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
-
-
Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
-
Storm of Visions
- The Chosen Ones, Book 1
- By: Christina Dodd
- Narrated by: Samantha Brentmoor
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the world was young, twins were born. One brought light to a dark world; the other, darkness and danger. Their powers could not be denied, and they gathered others around them, men and women destined to use their gifts for good or evil. Today, their descendants walk the earth as the Chosen... and the ultimate battle is about to begin. Jacqueline Vargha has always run from her gift. Now Caleb D'Angelo forces his way into her life, demands his place as her lover, and insists she take her place as one of the Chosen. She flees, he pursues, but she can no longer deny her visions.
-
-
Great start to the series
- By VJ on 08-23-21
By: Christina Dodd
-
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors
- A Novel
- By: Sonali Dev
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco’s most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that’s not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who’s achieved power by making its own nonnegotiable rules: Never trust an outsider, never do anything to jeopardize your brother’s political aspirations, and never, ever, defy your family. Trisha is guilty of breaking all three rules. But now, she has a chance to redeem herself. So long as she doesn’t repeat old mistakes.
-
-
From the Male Perspective
- By Consumer Products Tech Geek on 05-20-19
By: Sonali Dev
-
The Reason You're Alive
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Quick
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After 68-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard - that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline. David decides to return something precious he long ago stole from the man he now calls Clayton Fire Bear.
-
-
Kinda like Gran Torino..
- By H Harris on 06-02-18
By: Matthew Quick
-
Picture in the Sand
- By: Peter Blauner
- Narrated by: Sean Rohani
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ali Hassan, an Egyptian-American businessman in Brooklyn, reveals a secret past of activism and heartbreak in an attempt to keep his hot-headed teenaged grandson from making the greatest mistake of his life. In a journey that begins amid the high-wattage glamour of the sets of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and leads to the deserts of Cairo and beyond, Ali describes how he landed a dream job as DeMille’s personal assistant and then found himself enmeshed in events that changed the course of history.
-
-
Well narrated and worth the read
- By Mustella on 01-21-23
By: Peter Blauner
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Refugees
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.
-
-
Good collection of short stories
- By Thomas More on 03-19-17
-
A Man of Two Faces
- A Memoir, a History, a Memorial
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
-
-
If you don't like coddled, cry-babies, then avoid
- By Wayne A. Curto on 12-30-23
-
Nothing Ever Dies
- Vietnam and the Memory of War
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes. All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the best-selling novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both the Americans and the Vietnamese.
-
-
Good, probably should be read and not listened to via audible for the best experience.
- By Tanya on 10-24-16
-
The Displaced
- Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen - editor
- Narrated by: Greta Jung, Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience.
-
The Sorrow of War
- By: Bao Ninh
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there. Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, nonideological tone, The Sorrow of War has won worldwide acclaim and become an international best seller.
-
-
My dead former enemy was speaking to me!
- By Joe R. on 05-13-18
By: Bao Ninh
-
The Mountains Sing
- By: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North.
-
-
Incredible first English language novel
- By Gregory Barbee on 03-23-20
-
The Refugees
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.
-
-
Good collection of short stories
- By Thomas More on 03-19-17
-
A Man of Two Faces
- A Memoir, a History, a Memorial
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
-
-
If you don't like coddled, cry-babies, then avoid
- By Wayne A. Curto on 12-30-23
-
Nothing Ever Dies
- Vietnam and the Memory of War
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes. All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the best-selling novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both the Americans and the Vietnamese.
-
-
Good, probably should be read and not listened to via audible for the best experience.
- By Tanya on 10-24-16
-
The Displaced
- Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen - editor
- Narrated by: Greta Jung, Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In January 2017, Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dramatically cutting the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States each year. The American people spoke up, with protests, marches, donations, and lawsuits that quickly overturned the order. But the refugee caps remained. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience.
-
The Sorrow of War
- By: Bao Ninh
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier, provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there. Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, nonideological tone, The Sorrow of War has won worldwide acclaim and become an international best seller.
-
-
My dead former enemy was speaking to me!
- By Joe R. on 05-13-18
By: Bao Ninh
-
The Mountains Sing
- By: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North.
-
-
Incredible first English language novel
- By Gregory Barbee on 03-23-20
-
Vietnam
- A New History
- By: Christopher Goscha
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 23 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Vietnam, Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam, but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as they extended their influence southward from the Red River Delta.
-
-
Not bad, but not great.
- By Kp on 08-06-18
-
Less
- By: Andrew Sean Greer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: Your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes - it would be too awkward - and you can't say no - it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. Question: How do you arrange to skip town? Answer: You accept them all.
-
-
Endearing, funny, but sometimes overly clever
- By Lili on 07-30-17
-
The Sheltering Sky
- A Novel
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture—and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence—perhaps even the limits of human life—when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.
-
-
Classic Work of American 20th Century Fiction
- By Christian B. Kaufman on 06-12-24
By: Paul Bowles
-
The Golden Notebook
- By: Doris Lessing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
-
-
Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
Prophet Song
- By: Paul Lynch
- Narrated by: Gerry O'Brien
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother of four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.
-
-
Painfully powerful Tale.
- By Tom on 01-30-24
By: Paul Lynch
What listeners say about The Committed
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Catherine Pfaff
- 07-09-21
Put on your thinking cap.
Francois Chau is absolutely fabulous narrating this complex novel transporting the reader into Paris and the many characters that inhabit it smoothly alternating between English, French and Vietnamese bringing these diverse cultures to life. It’s complicated, very very complicated.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- F Scott McCown
- 02-01-24
Likeable bad person
A survey of Western and Asian cultures in the 1970s voiced by a charming transnational person who commits crimes while speaking for ordinary Vietnamese. I appreciated the perspective.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 06-30-24
The tortured double life
Life is not black or white. The belief that it is leads to violence and misery in an endless cycle. The alternative is no easy path either. The history of post war Vietnam, the dispersion of the Vietnamese people, the cascading negative effects of colonialism are all beautifully described
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- veronique Brown
- 11-02-21
weird
well written, interesting view. not what I expected but I enjoyed. worth the time to listen
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dalawang
- 10-31-22
If you are mixed Asian please read this
I can’t put into words how much I loved The Sympathizer and The Committed. I recommend you read them in order and have the time and space the way Nguyen so beautifully depicts so many facets and dilemmas that go through the mind of the main character. I am hoping for a 3rd book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stephen Victor
- 04-02-21
Kudos
Revealing ourselves to ourselves. Brilliant. Lovely. Difficult. Painful. I honor all you have been through enabling you to give to us, the readers, these revelations. Thank you.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Adam
- 03-28-21
Thrilling and beautifully written
Loved this book and could not stop listening to it. It gave interesting insights on Vietnam and Vietnamese diaspora culture.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Thomas A Bartlett
- 04-14-21
Good story, sometimes tediously clever
I enjoyed this less than the preceding novel. The plays on language which clearly amused and satisfied the author were often glib, and with constant repetition, tiresome.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Andor
- 06-21-21
Rewarding but confusing
I admire and learn so much from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s criticism of colonialism and imperialism, and their intersections with misogyny, that the book is infinitely fascinating. As with The Sympathizer, I find his plots and myriad characters hard to follow and the plot elusive. But his references, analogies, metaphors are so exact, it’s hard to put the book down. I haven’t thought of Althusser for a while and loved Nguyen’s use of ISA to explain the duality of repression.
Amazing insights.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Qats reads
- 10-30-21
Being of two minds is normal
Hell is a simple word but we need explorations like Committed to relearn and understand why we have such a concept of being. Nguyen takes us down the paths that ask what is and uses nihilism (even when we don’t believe in anything). Excellent double entendre throughout, a necessity when being of two minds. And being nonWestern in aspect, the two need not be in opposition or dualistic, but can be different cultural aspects of one point in time
Nguyen should be more celebrated and recognized. More people need to SEE into his stories.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!