The Incarnations
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Timo Chen
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Joy Osmanski
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By:
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Susan Barker
About this listen
Hailed as "China's Midnight's Children" (The Independent), this "brilliant, mind-expanding, and wildly original novel" (Chris Cleave) is about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations over 1,000 years haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soul mate.
Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soul mate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of 16 million in search of you.
So begins the first letter that falls into Wang's lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang's previous lives - from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution - bound to his mysterious "soul mate," spanning 1,000 years of betrayal and intrigue.
As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him - someone who claims to have known him for over 1,000 years. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher growing closer and closer....
Seamlessly weaving Chinese folklore, history, and literary classics, The Incarnations is a taut and gripping novel that sheds light on the cyclical nature of history as it hints that the past is never truly settled.
©2015 Susan Barker. All rights reserved. (P)2015 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Germany, 1945. Klara Janowska and her daughter, Alicja, have walked for weeks to get to Graufeld Displaced Persons camp. In the cramped, dirty, dangerous conditions they, along with 3,200 others, are the lucky ones. They have survived and will do anything to find a way back home. But when Klara recognises a man in the camp from her past, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. He knows exactly what she did during the war to save her daughter. She knows his real identity. What will be the price of silence? And will either make it out of the camp alive?
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Really interesting
- By Karen on 11-10-18
By: Kate Furnivall
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Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
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Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
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Church of Marvels
- A Novel
- By: Leslie Parry
- Narrated by: Denice Stradling
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs.
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If Dickens needed a NY location for a story..
- By Sandi from Oregon on 05-13-15
By: Leslie Parry
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Jerusalem Maiden
- By: Talia Carner
- Narrated by: Lise Bruneau
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, a young Orthodox Jewish woman in the holy city of Jerusalem is expected to marry and produce many sons to help hasten the Messiah's arrival. While the feisty Esther Kaminsky understands her obligations, her artistic talent inspires her to secretly explore worlds outside her religion, to dream of studying in Paris - and to believe that God has a special destiny for her. When tragedy strikes her family, Esther views it as a warning from an angry God....
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No dreaming, No painting, No thinking . . .
- By Debbie on 04-18-15
By: Talia Carner
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Deathless
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Kim de Blecourt
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what devils or wicked witches are to Western European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories that have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the 20th century.
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My Favorite Fantasy Book of the Year
- By Robert on 12-29-13
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Tulip Fever
- By: Deborah Moggach
- Narrated by: Rula Lenska
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeenth-century Amsterdam is a city in the grip of tulip mania, basking in the wealth it has generated. Sophia’s husband Cornelis, an ageing merchant, is among those grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his young bride. But as the portrait grows, so does the passion between Sophia and the painter; and as ambitions, desires and dreams breed an intricate deception, their reckless gamble propels their lives towards a thrilling and tragic conclusion.
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Very interesting book
- By Kevin Crumpton on 01-31-17
By: Deborah Moggach
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Palimpsest
- By: Catherynne M. Valente
- Narrated by: Aasne Vigesaa
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse - a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night. To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers.
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Excellent Prose, but lacks maturity
- By Michael on 08-09-15
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A River of Stars
- A Novel
- By: Vanessa Hua
- Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Holed up with other mothers-to-be in a secret maternity home in Los Angeles, Scarlett Chen is far from her native China, where she worked in a factory and fell in love with the married owner, Boss Yeung. Now she’s carrying his baby. To ensure that his child - his first son - has every advantage, Boss Yeung has shipped Scarlett off to give birth on American soil. As Scarlett awaits the baby’s arrival, she spars with her imperious housemates. The only one who fits in even less is Daisy, a spirited pregnant teenager who is being kept apart from her American boyfriend.
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Wonderful surprise!
- By Barbara Voss on 10-16-18
By: Vanessa Hua
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The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautifully written, unforgettable novel of a troubled marriage, set against the lush landscape and political turmoil of Trinidad. Monique Roffey's Orange Prize-shortlisted novel is a gripping portrait of post-colonialism that stands among great works by Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and Andrea Levy. When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease.
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Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
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The Winterfox Journals Book One: Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter
- By: Brian P. Easton
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Among the Northern Cheyenne of the Great Plains lives a boy named Winterfox, whose family has fought monsters since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. In the aftermath of Westward Expansion, he has become the sole heir to their blood feud against the Beast. Winterfox comes of age in the long shadows of the American frontier, a time when magic has not yet passed into myth. It is a place where the mundane and fantastic still walk side by side, and the warrior society of the Rédo’osnin Dog Men will be remembered a little while longer.
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Counting Coup and Taking Scalps
- By Derek M. Grebner on 11-11-19
By: Brian P. Easton
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Glorious
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of Bernice L. McFadden's rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.
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Gruesome violence
- By Marilyn on 11-22-11
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Sold
- By: Patricia McCormick
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
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Perfectly Haunting....
- By Theodore on 01-13-13
What listeners say about The Incarnations
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Pictorama
- 09-05-16
Wanted to like it
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
No, I wouldn't. It is fairly well written and at times is compelling, but it is simply too violent for me.
Would you recommend The Incarnations to your friends? Why or why not?
As above, no. I generally are very fond of books with past lives or time travel so this should have been a no brainer for me and I wanted to like it. I just found it unremittingly violent. In addition, while the ending was ok, it was a bit so what?
Did the narration match the pace of the story?
It wasn't that objectionable, but the male reader had a strangely stiff manner of reading. I wasn't sure English was his primary language and that he was always that comfortable.
Any additional comments?
This is a book that someone else might rave about. Just not my cup of tea in the end.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Steven
- 10-07-15
Great, complex story, marred by horrible narration
So I'll be making sure to separate my thoughts of the actual book from the narration that it received via audio book. The book was narrated by two people. One was good, the other was horrible. The male narrator dictated everything, even emotions. Dialogue sounded comically robotic. "What. Do. You. Mean?" No emotion, inflection or tone to any of the characters that he portrayed. They all sounded like they were read from a script. Well..they technically were read from a script, but that shouldn't sound like it!
Anyway, despite this one narrators hack job, this book really satiated my love of loopy, cyclical plots. The ending really ties that knot together. In fact throughout the beginning of the novel, things seem very disjointed, unrelated, and happenstance. I was a bit worried that it wouldn't "close the loop" properly as I was expecting even. Even the tales of the incarnations bothered me a bit, which I'll explain later.
The book opens from the perspective of a Taxi driver, Wong, who seems to be a middle aged, down on his life, married Chinese fellow. His life isn't horrible, but underneath the surface, he just seems unhappy. We are given details of Wong's past, piecemeal. His own backstory come into sharper focus as the story progresses, and is masterfully interwoven with letters that he receives. So we get an effect that is allowing us to dig deeper into Wong's complicated past and those around him. (His wife,child, ailing father and MIA real mother, step mother, and mysterious 'friend' ) What's neat is that most of these characters all come into play through flashbacks that are a bit jarring at first, but help with the story. In the beginning, this was a hard juggling act. We have the main present day storyline, then flashbacks, from the present day Wong, then letters received by Wong, about the incarnations of previous lives.
In this way, the dual narration helped immensely since the narrator would be switched from male to female, whenever a letter was being read. This helped me personally keep up with the continuity of where I 'was'.
A big complaint of mine about the story is that each of the letters, which represents one of the reincarnations, provide what felt like seemingly forced sexual scenes. I have no problem in the slightest with having the romantic, love story that plays out throughout the ages. That's a great, romantic and beautiful idea. But to me, maybe due to the narration as well, it came off as false, forced, and faked. Most of the characters involved in these homosexual encounters are young kids, so I get that it's supposed to be sort of awkward and not very 'smooth', but the it just seemed un-necessarily added for certain stories. At least the actual sexual acts didn't need to be so blunt and in your face. Sometimes the subtle description would have been a better way to go.
That minor gripe, the story finishes with a very long telling of the Maoist, red China from the 50's and 60's. This, to me is the 'heaviest' of the stories, as it links past and present. Even though it's the longest story, it seems the most rushed! Large gaps in time are just skipped over. Years go back in between sentences, which always irks me. All of the characters are wrapped up in a climax that left me surprised, that I didn't see it coming sooner, which is always pleasant. And this one in a very cyclic nature.
The settings, and theme of all of the stories is China through different periods, which was interesting for me, since we don't get a lot of stories like this that deal with at least semi-accurate events. I haven't done my back ground research so I don't know how accurate the events portrayed here are. One of the stories, the Siegeing of the northern city of Zhongdu by the Mongols was hideously gruesome, and I unfortunately don't doubt it's accuracy considering it was at the hands of Ghengis Khan.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this story. There was nearly zero humor, it was one pretty depressing tale after the other, and we didn't really get 'closure' of the main character... Also from a purely American English speaking perspective, the names of all the characters are a bit hard to follow at first. Especially since I was listening to this, and couldn't see the names in print. It took me a while to sort out who was who...Despite all of that it was a good ride. The settings are vividly described, the characters are easy to feel for (which isn't easy to do) and I found myself hoping for the best for Wong and his family and hating his materialistic, selfish and self center step mother.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Krystina
- 09-16-15
Fascinating!
This was a great listen! The premise of the story had me intrigued and once I began listening it lived up to this initial intrigue. The stories with in the story are fascinating and full of history. Throughout the story I was on the edge of my seat dying to know and playing the guessing game of, who is writing these letters? The readers also performed very well; probably one of the most enjoyable audio books I've listened to! I definitely would recommend this book/audiobook!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-22-16
unexpected
not at all what I expected! It was very well performed, though, I must say.
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- teaman
- 04-20-16
Good story
Interesting story, well written, good performances. The history was brutal, but history is often brutal, regardless of the country.
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1 person found this helpful
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- J Kennedy
- 10-17-16
Fascinating insights
Although a fantasy, this story provides a look at little spoken Chinese history. The characters are fictional, but the story makes the reader curious about the Chinese past.
The female reader was brilliant, but the flat reading of the man takes time to get used to.
The characters in this novel live through lifetimes of unspeakable violence and abuse of women. The tales that unfold are addictive, but the sexual descriptions of aggression are difficult. This is not a story for minors.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bluebird
- 12-08-15
Didn't like the narrator's baby talk voice
This book his such his reviews but iI could not get past the narration to get a sense of the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- cecil reniche-smith
- 08-29-15
What was that you said?
This was one of those audiobooks that I might have enjoyed more if I had not been so annoyed by the narration. The parts read by the woman narrator were fine, but the man's quasi-robotic delivery and bizarre mispronunciation of simple, common words kept throwing me out of the story. He would also stress the wrong word in some sentences, leading to the occasionally hilarious unintended meaning.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Jennifer W. Weyler
- 10-12-15
fantastic
Great novel, excellent narration! The plot is clever and original. I read a NYT book review that loved this book, and it completely lives up to the hype!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Katena Roberts
- 04-12-16
Story is great - the male narrator leaves much to
Love the story, however the male narrator's mispronunciations are quite distracting at times. Still a story that I'd recommend.
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