
The God of Small Things
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
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $13.97
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sneha Mathan
-
By:
-
Arundhati Roy
About this listen
Man Booker Prize Winner, 1997
Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India.
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family - their lonely, lovely mother Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).
When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that things can change in a day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
©1997 Arundhati Roy (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The White Tiger
- A Novel
- By: Aravind Adiga
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Through Balram's eyes, we see India as we've never seen it before: the cockroaches and the call centers, the prostitutes and the worshippers, the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger.
With a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create morality and money doesn't solve every problem.
-
-
Entertaining, thought-provoking, darkly funny
- By Mark P. Furlong on 05-29-08
By: Aravind Adiga
-
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
-
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
- A Novel
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Arundhati Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety - in search of meaning and of love.
-
-
Author narration does not work for me
- By Amazon Customer on 06-18-17
By: Arundhati Roy
-
A Fine Balance
- By: Rohinton Mistry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
-
-
Read this book if your heart is made of steal
- By Amazon Shopper on 03-23-08
By: Rohinton Mistry
-
Midnight's Children
- BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Nikesh Patel, Meera Syal, Anneika Rose, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saleem Sinai is born on the stroke of midnight on 14th-15th August 1947, at the exact moment that India and Pakistan become separate, independent nations. From that moment on, his fate is mysteriously handcuffed to the history of his country. But Saleem's story starts almost 30 years earlier, when his grandfather, Dr Aadam Aziz, falls in love with a woman concealed behind a perforated sheet.
-
-
Superb
- By Sharlotte on 11-16-18
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
-
-
Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The White Tiger
- A Novel
- By: Aravind Adiga
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Through Balram's eyes, we see India as we've never seen it before: the cockroaches and the call centers, the prostitutes and the worshippers, the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger.
With a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create morality and money doesn't solve every problem.
-
-
Entertaining, thought-provoking, darkly funny
- By Mark P. Furlong on 05-29-08
By: Aravind Adiga
-
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
-
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
- A Novel
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Arundhati Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety - in search of meaning and of love.
-
-
Author narration does not work for me
- By Amazon Customer on 06-18-17
By: Arundhati Roy
-
A Fine Balance
- By: Rohinton Mistry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
-
-
Read this book if your heart is made of steal
- By Amazon Shopper on 03-23-08
By: Rohinton Mistry
-
Midnight's Children
- BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Nikesh Patel, Meera Syal, Anneika Rose, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saleem Sinai is born on the stroke of midnight on 14th-15th August 1947, at the exact moment that India and Pakistan become separate, independent nations. From that moment on, his fate is mysteriously handcuffed to the history of his country. But Saleem's story starts almost 30 years earlier, when his grandfather, Dr Aadam Aziz, falls in love with a woman concealed behind a perforated sheet.
-
-
Superb
- By Sharlotte on 11-16-18
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
-
-
Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
-
My Seditious Heart
- Collected Nonfiction
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 36 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
My Seditious Heart collects the work of a two-decade period when Arundhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile environment. Radical and superbly listenable, the essays speak in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Roy offers a powerful defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites.
-
-
real face of secular india
- By bilal on 11-26-19
By: Arundhati Roy
-
A Tale for the Time Being
- By: Ruth Ozeki
- Narrated by: Ruth Ozeki
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox - possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami.
-
-
Engaging story beautifully read
- By Karen on 01-30-14
By: Ruth Ozeki
-
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
-
One Hundred Years of Solitude
- By: Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.
-
-
What in the heck happened?????
- By Melinda on 02-05-14
By: Gabriel García Márquez, and others
-
Beloved
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
-
-
Author-read Books
- By John R Williford on 07-14-06
By: Toni Morrison
-
Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 35 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
-
-
Need to Disclose and Highlight Name of Translator
- By Charles B on 08-27-18
By: Leo Tolstoy
-
The Lowland
- By: Jhumpa Lahiri
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other in the Calcutta neighborhood where they grow up. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the 1960s, and Udayan—charismatic and impulsive—finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty; he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes.
-
-
My least favorite of all her work.
- By SAK on 10-09-13
By: Jhumpa Lahiri
-
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- By: Ilan Pappe
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing."
-
-
Crucial for understanding Israel-Palestine today
- By Mark on 12-27-18
By: Ilan Pappe
-
East of Eden
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 25 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
-
-
Why have I avoided this Beautiful Book???
- By Kelly on 03-25-17
By: John Steinbeck
-
Convenience Store Woman
- By: Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori - translator
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tokyo resident Keiko Furukara has never fit in - neither in her family, nor in school - but when at the age of 18 she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of national convenience store chain Smile Mart, she realizes instantly that she has found her purpose in life. Delighted to be able to exist in a place where the rules of social interaction are crystal clear (many are laid out line-by-line in the store's manual), Keiko does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and mode of speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less.
-
-
Am amazing and different story
- By D.R. on 04-10-19
By: Sayaka Murata, and others
-
All the Light We Cannot See
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Zach Appelman
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is 12, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
-
-
Afraid to Write a "Less-Than-Positive" Review
- By Elizabeth on 08-06-14
By: Anthony Doerr
-
A Thousand Splendid Suns
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Atossa Leoni
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them, in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul, they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.
-
-
Completely brilliant
- By Suze Weinberg on 06-01-07
By: Khaled Hosseini
Featured Article: 45+ Quotes to Help You Make Peace with—and Take Charge of—Change
Reeling from change? Or ready to make some changes in your life? These wise words from authors just might give you the comfort or boost you need. Their words reflect the nature of change and the swirl of feelings surrounding it—from fear to exhilaration. In this collection, you'll find gentle reminders that change will keep happening and reassurance that you can handle it. When you face it and embrace it, change can enrich your life in unexpected ways.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The God of Small Things
- A BBC Radio Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Siobhan Finneran, Paul Bhattacharjee, Yasmin Wilde, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arundhati Roy's debut novel The God of Small Things took the literary world by storm, winning the Booker Prize in 1997. It went on to sell over six million copies in 40 languages, and was named as one of the BBC's 100 'Novels That Shaped Our World' in 2019. Set in Kerala in both the present and 1969, it tells the compelling tale of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha, whose lives are shattered by the 'Love Laws' that dictate 'who should be loved, and how.
-
-
Brilliant , beautiful and brutal
- By Anonymous User on 01-23-24
By: Arundhati Roy
-
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
- A Novel
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Arundhati Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety - in search of meaning and of love.
-
-
Author narration does not work for me
- By Amazon Customer on 06-18-17
By: Arundhati Roy
-
Things That Can and Cannot Be Said
- Essays and Conversations
- By: Arundhati Roy, John Cusack
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Jim Meskimen
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 2014, Arundhati Roy, John Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden. The result is a series of essays and dialogues in which Roy and Cusack reflect on their conversations with Snowden. In these provocative and penetrating discussions, Roy and Cusack discuss the nature of the state, empire, and surveillance in an era of perpetual war, the meaning of flags and patriotism, the role of foundations and NGOs in limiting dissent, and the ways in which capital but not people can freely cross borders.
-
-
Very Misleading
- By Tinkerbellstwin on 10-16-20
By: Arundhati Roy, and others
-
The White Tiger
- A Novel
- By: Aravind Adiga
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Through Balram's eyes, we see India as we've never seen it before: the cockroaches and the call centers, the prostitutes and the worshippers, the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger.
With a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create morality and money doesn't solve every problem.
-
-
Entertaining, thought-provoking, darkly funny
- By Mark P. Furlong on 05-29-08
By: Aravind Adiga
-
A Fine Balance
- By: Rohinton Mistry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
-
-
Read this book if your heart is made of steal
- By Amazon Shopper on 03-23-08
By: Rohinton Mistry
-
Azadi
- Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Shaheen Khan
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The chant of Azadi! - Urdu for "freedom!" - is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically it has also become the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. What lies between these two calls for freedom? A chasm or a bridge? In this series of penetrating essays on politics and literature, Arundhati Roy examines this question and challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.
-
-
Eye opener to all the fascist practices in India
- By Samanvitha on 02-02-21
By: Arundhati Roy
-
The God of Small Things
- A BBC Radio Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Siobhan Finneran, Paul Bhattacharjee, Yasmin Wilde, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arundhati Roy's debut novel The God of Small Things took the literary world by storm, winning the Booker Prize in 1997. It went on to sell over six million copies in 40 languages, and was named as one of the BBC's 100 'Novels That Shaped Our World' in 2019. Set in Kerala in both the present and 1969, it tells the compelling tale of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha, whose lives are shattered by the 'Love Laws' that dictate 'who should be loved, and how.
-
-
Brilliant , beautiful and brutal
- By Anonymous User on 01-23-24
By: Arundhati Roy
-
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
- A Novel
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Arundhati Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety - in search of meaning and of love.
-
-
Author narration does not work for me
- By Amazon Customer on 06-18-17
By: Arundhati Roy
-
Things That Can and Cannot Be Said
- Essays and Conversations
- By: Arundhati Roy, John Cusack
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Jim Meskimen
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 2014, Arundhati Roy, John Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with Edward Snowden. The result is a series of essays and dialogues in which Roy and Cusack reflect on their conversations with Snowden. In these provocative and penetrating discussions, Roy and Cusack discuss the nature of the state, empire, and surveillance in an era of perpetual war, the meaning of flags and patriotism, the role of foundations and NGOs in limiting dissent, and the ways in which capital but not people can freely cross borders.
-
-
Very Misleading
- By Tinkerbellstwin on 10-16-20
By: Arundhati Roy, and others
-
The White Tiger
- A Novel
- By: Aravind Adiga
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life - having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Through Balram's eyes, we see India as we've never seen it before: the cockroaches and the call centers, the prostitutes and the worshippers, the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger.
With a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create morality and money doesn't solve every problem.
-
-
Entertaining, thought-provoking, darkly funny
- By Mark P. Furlong on 05-29-08
By: Aravind Adiga
-
A Fine Balance
- By: Rohinton Mistry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
-
-
Read this book if your heart is made of steal
- By Amazon Shopper on 03-23-08
By: Rohinton Mistry
-
Azadi
- Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Shaheen Khan
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The chant of Azadi! - Urdu for "freedom!" - is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically it has also become the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. What lies between these two calls for freedom? A chasm or a bridge? In this series of penetrating essays on politics and literature, Arundhati Roy examines this question and challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.
-
-
Eye opener to all the fascist practices in India
- By Samanvitha on 02-02-21
By: Arundhati Roy
-
My Seditious Heart
- Collected Nonfiction
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 36 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
My Seditious Heart collects the work of a two-decade period when Arundhati Roy devoted herself to the political essay as a way of opening up space for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile environment. Radical and superbly listenable, the essays speak in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Roy offers a powerful defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites.
-
-
real face of secular india
- By bilal on 11-26-19
By: Arundhati Roy
-
Capitalism
- A Ghost Story
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Vaishali Sharma
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country's 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product.
-
-
Courageous Reporting
- By Doug - Audible on 03-31-15
By: Arundhati Roy
-
All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
-
-
Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
-
A Suitable Boy (Dramatised)
- By: Vikram Seth
- Narrated by: Ayesha Dharker, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.
-
-
would prefer unabridged naration
- By Tamshine on 07-07-11
By: Vikram Seth
-
Help Me! Special Edition
- One Woman's Quest to Find Out If Self-Help Really Can Change Your Life
- By: Marianne Power
- Narrated by: Marianne Power, Mary Power
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marianne decided to finally find out if her elusive "perfect existence" - the one without debt, anxiety, or hangover Netflix marathons, the one where she healthily bounced around town and met the cashmere-sweater-wearing man of her dreams - really did lie in the pages of our best-known and acclaimed self-help books. She vowed to test a book a month for one year, following its advice to the letter, taking what she hoped would be the surest path to a flawless new her. But as the months passed, Marianne’s reality was turned upside down.
-
-
Cute Story, good performance.
- By Ken on 10-10-19
By: Marianne Power
-
Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
-
-
Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The Bone People
- By: Keri Hulme
- Narrated by: Ruby Solly
- Length: 19 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With narration and original taonga puoro music by Ruby Solly, this powerful and mesmerising book tracks the complicated relationships between three outcasts: Kerewin, an artist estranged from her family and art; a mute boy called Simon, who tries to steal from her; and his tender but brutal foster father Joe.
-
-
Masterpiece, OK!
- By Amanda Mercier on 11-22-24
By: Keri Hulme
-
You Can Be an Optimist
- Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
- By: Lucy MacDonald
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Optimism is an attitude that sets us up for life success by helping us focus on what works and how we contribute to what works. Optimistic people have more fun, are healthier, and achieve more of their potential. Optimistic thinking is a skill that anyone can learn. In this simple, easy-to-use audiobook, Lucy Macdonald will show you how to harness the power of optimism to help you create a more positive, upbeat attitude to life.
By: Lucy MacDonald
-
Last Orders
- By: Graham Swift
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble, Gigi Marceau Clarke, Jenny Sterlin, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a London Pub called The Coach and Horses, four men gather. Three of them have been friends for half a lifetime, having fought in the same war, drunk in the same pubs, and bet on the same horses. Now they have come together to deliver the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, to the sea. Their journey, which will take them deep into their collective and individual pasts, lies at the center of an astonishingly moving novel of friendship, memory, and fate.
-
-
Don't hesitate
- By Robert on 03-23-06
By: Graham Swift
-
Stories We Never Tell
- By: Savi Sharma
- Narrated by: Kaushik Ramchandran, Nishi Jagavat
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There are stories we never talk about. Stories we are afraid to share. Simply because they hurt too much or no one wants to listen to them. Such was the story of Jhanvi, who is a budding social media influencer. She appears to have it all together, but something is missing: Jhanvi has this impossible need that drives her to be more perfect than any person could possibly be. And the story of Ashray, who had a rocky start in life. With hard work and determination, he translates his dreams into reality, but his deep-seated insecurities come to the fore when life throws him a curveball.
By: Savi Sharma
-
Disgrace
- A Novel
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Michael Cumpsty
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.
-
-
Great book - aptly named
- By JOHN on 07-18-10
By: J. M. Coetzee
-
Perfectly Ordinary People
- By: Nick Alexander
- Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells, David de Vries, Helen Lloyd, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth–an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France.
-
-
Moving story
- By Michelle on 01-30-25
By: Nick Alexander
What listeners say about The God of Small Things
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anna
- 01-06-20
Myth and Performance does not expunge colonialism
I want to love this book, but it deprives me, as a reader, of what I wanted most from the author. Beautiful metaphors and words don't assuage the deep grief of cultural repression. Arundhati Roy bends time, mythology and nature like metal in the hands of a jeweler. She makes filigree from social injustice and tragedy with perfect beads of infinite details. Layers upon layers of intimate history melt in a strange crucible, a cauldron, of repressed desires from multiple generations.
I walked away from the book feeling overwhelmed, almost cheated. After reading Joëlle Célérier-Vitasse's article, The Blurring of Frontiers in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, in Études anglaises 2008/1 (Vol. 61), I am better equipped to appreciate Roy's masterful novel. I am not, however, any less grief stricken. Kathakali is a highly stylized dance drama performed by an all male company whose characters are dressed with colourful and intricate costumes and display codified and elaborate make-up. It is this mythological drama that underpins the story of fraternal twins Esta & Rahel, their mother Ammu, her lover Velutha, and their extended family network.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-anglaises-2008-1-page-68.htm#
The drama begins with the death of a cherished, English-Indian cousin, Sophie Mol. Most of the book centers around the grief over a child, but it is a good man's needless & violent death that left me most sad. Interspersed with references to Shakespeare (The Tempest, Julius Cæsar, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra), as well as the theatrical metaphor of Kathakali, The God of Small Things bridges impossible cultural gaps. This is the miracle of Roy's narrative filigree. Everything is made in translation of tragedy between two very different cultures. Unlike the crimson banana jam that Esta stirs, however, no nourishment comes from this melting pot.
I prefer the metaphor of intricate Indian jewelry to fusion cooking as a way of understanding Roy's work. She has crafted a beautiful tiara with the crown jewel characters of Esta, Rahel, Ammu and Velutha. The metal work that surrounds these gems are the snaking vines of family obligation, cultural & religious guilt, which are wound tighter by sociopolitical upheaval. The combs that keep this crown in place bite into the reader's consciousness, bending to the point of breaking what seem to be universal laws. Roy calls them The Love Laws, codes that decide who is loved, how they are loved and in what quantity.
Célérier-Vitasse's argues in her article that The God of Small Things, "reveals a new possibility of breaking in the realm of artistic creativity and freeing people from neocolonial domination." Reading Roy's book in 2020, (more than 20 years after it was written) I would like to think that we are all headed toward a "pursuit of some more positive and constructive globalization", but I'm not sure humanity is capable.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
- Roxanna
- 07-08-17
Innocence lost
Beautifully written story of innocence lost, portrayed so vividly that I could almost hear, smell and taste the scenes.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
20 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ramlah
- 03-29-19
This book has me both excited and confused.
Okay so listening to the audiobook had me want to keep going to a text which did not exist. The fact that the book is not in sequential order made it an poor choice as an audiobook. I enjoyed it overall.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ellen
- 02-25-19
Too Much Work
I found the author’s overly verbose writing style, in combination with the difficult names of the characters, made for a very tough read. Too much work for my taste.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- karen drozd
- 05-19-21
one of my favorite books
Soft, lyrical, sad. a beautiful book. uplifting, a good study of human nature and the human heart.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ailin Boghouspour
- 07-27-21
Very well written cultural slaughter of individuals
As a middle eastern this book hit hard in my inner cultural fears and limits which all of us living in almost same regions in different countries have in common.
The tragic lifestyle of third world looking up to advanced civilizations to learn ,to be saved ,to be accepted is so so sad and so overwhelming specially for children and for emotional adults who had to endure the most difficult thing “the cultural slaughter “ of individuality and innocence.
Enjoyed the performance immensely, I appreciate the narration, so flawless with accents, word pronunciation and keeping the tone of deep deep rooted grief throughout the long hours of reading.
So relatable , I enjoyed this read and couldn’t stop listening for hours.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joelyn
- 12-10-20
Beautiful and Painful
The small things that clasp our thoughts, and change our lives from infancy to old age. India and its many colored threads of culture. A child’s viewpoint of adult actions is no less substantive than how they occur and the forces behind them.
I was mesmerized with the delicacy of language as well as the lives that unfolded in this story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- C in FL
- 05-23-21
Just okay.
Hard to stay connected to the story. The writing is bit over the top. Tries to hard to be "literary." The narration is too precious, too self-conscious.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anna
- 10-25-20
Beyond
Nothing in the review that i read prepared me for the absolute mind fuck that this book was. I am NEVER one to say this, but this is art. Please if you have the opportunity... take it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- M. Lowenthal
- 01-13-21
Surprisingly wonderful
Surprisingly well crafted, extremely interesting, very moving. Cross cultural exploration, family, biology. Worth reading. Go got it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!