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The Four Books
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
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Publisher's summary
From master storyteller Yan Lianke, winner of the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, The Four Books is a powerful, daring novel of the dog-eat-dog psychology inside a labor camp for intellectuals during Mao's Great Leap Forward. Yan is a renowned author in China and among its most censored; his mythical, sometimes surreal tale cuts to the bone in its portrayal of the struggle between authoritarian power and man's will to prevail against the darkest odds through camaraderie, love, and faith.
In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling reeducation compound, freethinking artists and academics are detained to strengthen their loyalty to Communist ideologies. Here, the Musician and her lover, the Scholar, along with the Author and the Theologian, are forced to carry out grueling physical work and are encouraged to inform on each other for dissident behavior. The prize: winning a chance at freedom. They're overseen by preadolescent supervisor the Child, who delights in reward systems and excessive punishments. When agricultural and industrial production quotas are raised to an unattainable level, the ninety-ninth district dissolves into lawlessness. And then, as inclement weather and famine set in, they are abandoned by the regime and left alone to survive.
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Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating narrative. The hero—or antihero—of Mo Yan’s new novel is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his benevolence to his peasants. His story is a deliriously unique journey and absolutely riveting tale that reveals the author’s love of a homeland beset by ills inevitable, political, and traditional.
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REINCARNATION
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 06-24-14
By: Mo Yan, and others
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The Long Walk
- The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
- By: Slavomir Rawicz
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-six-year-old cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and sent to the Siberian Gulag. In the spring of 1941, he escaped with six of his fellow prisoners, including one American. Thus began their astonishing trek to freedom.
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Inspiring and absorbing
- By A. Millard on 05-30-07
By: Slavomir Rawicz
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Stars Between the Sun and Moon
- One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom
- By: Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in 1970s North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household - her parents worked in the factories, and the family scraped by on rations. Nightly she bowed to her photo of Kim Il-Sung. It was the beginning of a chaotic period with a decade-long famine. Jang married an abusive man who sold their baby. She left him and went home to help her family by illegally crossing the river to China to trade goods. She was caught and imprisoned twice.
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Fantastic story. Well read.
- By Jfm on 02-20-16
By: Lucia Jang, and others
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The Seamstress
- By: Sara Tuvel Bernstein, Louise Loots Thornton, Marlene Bernstein Samuels
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Told with the same old-fashioned narrative power as the novels of Herman Wouk, The Seamstress is the true story of Seren (Sara) Tuvel Bernstein and her survival during wartime. This powerful eyewitness account of survival, told with power and grace, will stay with listeners for years to come.
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Overcome with Emotion
- By Meryl on 05-16-13
By: Sara Tuvel Bernstein, and others
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Zorba the Greek
- By: Nikos Kazantzakis
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A wonderful tale of a young man’s coming of age, Zorba the Greek has been a classic of world literature since it was first translated into English in 1952 and made into an unforgettable movie with Anthony Quinn. Zorba, an irrepressible, earthy hedonist, sweeps his young disciple along as he wines, dines, and loves his way through a life dedicated to fulfilling his copious appetites. Zorba is irresistible in this charming audio production by veteran narrator George Guidall.
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Drink life to the lees
- By Scot Potts on 04-25-13
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The Samurai's Garden
- A Novel
- By: Gail Tsukiyama
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight.
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A Novel Painted with a Master's Brush
- By Bay Area Califa on 06-25-18
By: Gail Tsukiyama
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Rena's Promise
- A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz
- By: Rena Kornreich Gelissen, Heather Dune Macadam
- Narrated by: Heather Dune Macadam
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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"I do not hate. To hate is to let Hitler win." - Rena Kornreich Gelissen. On March 26, 1942, the first mass transport of Jews - 999 young women - arrived in Auschwitz. Among them was Rena Kornreich, the 716th woman numbered in camp. A few days later, her sister Danka arrives and so begins a trial of love and courage that will last three years and 41 days, from the beginning Auschwitz death camp to the end of the war.
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Excellent Content / Horrible Production
- By Simone on 07-23-15
By: Rena Kornreich Gelissen, and others
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Into the Forest
- By: Jean Hegland
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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As America collapses in the chaos of war, pollution, and bankruptcy, two sisters pool their resources to survive alone in the hills above San Francisco. Although dwindling food and increasing isolation threaten them, they soon find a more immediate danger standing at their door. When a young man arrives, his friendship offers tantalizing fulfillment, but his love threatens to divide the sisters.
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Depressing, boring, & disturbing
- By The Ropers on 07-14-16
By: Jean Hegland
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Edge of Eternity
- By: Randy Alcorn
- Narrated by: Roger Marsh, Phil Ross
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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Nick Seagrave is a disillusioned business executive who has lost loved ones to tragedy and his family to neglect. Now, at a point of great crisis, he finds himself inexplicably transported to what appears to be another world. Suddenly he's confronted with profoundly clear views of his own past and personality. And he's enabled to see, hear, taste, and smell the realities of both heaven and hell - realities that force him to face dangers and trials far greater than any he's known before.
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AMAZING
- By Julie R. VanderMate on 08-12-10
By: Randy Alcorn
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She Would Be King
- A Novel
- By: Wayétu Moore
- Narrated by: Wayétu Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him.
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Beautiful example of magical realism.
- By Danielle on 10-07-18
By: Wayétu Moore
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The List
- By: Patricia Forde
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In the post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval city of Ark, speech is constrained to 500 sanctioned words. If somewhere were to speak outside that approved lexicon, they'd face banishment. The only exceptions to this rule are the Wordsmith and his apprentice, Letta. Together, they are the keepers and archivists of all language. But when Letta's master dies, she is suddenly promoted to Wordsmith and finds the situation more complicated than she knew.
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Love is Language
- By Jennie Smith on 02-19-21
By: Patricia Forde
What listeners say about The Four Books
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- david h
- 04-24-23
History never to be repeated
This is a "factional" account of a group of sent down educated people in late 50s China. Everything you've read is there... the mind games, the cooked-up misdemeanours, the dehumanization, agricultural and industrial failures, and eventually the mass starvation and cannibalism. To read these things written by a Chinese author, no doubt informed by family stories and domestic scholarship is powerful and moving.
Although a little long, the story is a fascinating audiobook, brilliantly performed by Mr Backman. Highly recommended.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 06-10-23
Anti-Christian
“The Four Books” is a satire exposing the fallibility of belief in a Christian God. Yan Lianke is a Chinese author living in Beijing whose books and short stories are banned by the government. The main character in Lianke's story is called “Author” who is charged with responsibility for two of “The Four Books”. Two books are titled “criminal records” and “secret reports” written by "Author" for a camp commandant to know who and what everyone in a prison camp is thinking and doing. The other two books are less clearly identified but there is the “Scholar’s” book and presumably, the Christian Bible. The main characters in Lianke’s book are the “Boy”, the “Scholar”, the “Musician”, and the “Author”.
Lianke chooses one period in China’s history as an example of religions and governments’ failure to peacefully guide or manage society. Undoubtedly, Lianke chooses China’s story because that is the culture he most intimately understands. Lianke shows how religion and government ineptly handle human nature. The weakness in Lianke’s argument is that self-interest is an individual human characteristic. Self-interest cannot be erased by Buddhism, any religion, or government. Buddhist belief does not ameliorate aberrant self-interest that deviates from those who choose not to seek peace and wisdom.
Self-interest in a famine leads some to prostitute themselves, murder their equals, inferiors or superiors, and become cannibalistic dead or some combination thereof. No widely accepted religion or government seems to have found a solution to equitably treat individuals’ self-interest. Lianke believes Buddhism is an answer, but one wonders how an individual's search for peace and wisdom will feed the hungry.
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- maria nahlik
- 05-19-20
A story about our darkest human side
For those who struggle to understand why we have wars, concentration camps, revolting inequalities. It is a light shed on the inimaginable resilience of the human being facing horrible extreme darkness of the spirit and hardship. Why are we causing all this suffering to each other? And, the central question of the book, what gives us the power to resist the darkest physical and psychical hardship? The author's answer is coming at the end of the book, after a trip through darkness, cold, famine, pain and death.... The narrator is as well fabulous. I wish more Audible books would be read with this expressivity and clarity.
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