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The Old Drift
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
"A dazzling debut, establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage." (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times Book Review)
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by:
- Dwight Garner, The New York Times
- The New York Times Book Review
- Time
- NPR
- The Atlantic
- BuzzFeed
- Tordotcom
- Kirkus Reviews
- BookPage
Winner of:
- The Arthur C. Clarke Award
- The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award
- The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction
- The Windham-Campbell Prizes for Fiction
The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (Black, White, Brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives - their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes - emerge through a panorama of history, fairy tale, romance, and science fiction.
From a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones, and viral vaccines, this gripping, unforgettable novel is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time.
Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
"An intimate, brainy, gleaming epic.... This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade." (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)
"A founding epic in the vein of Virgil’s Aeneid...though in its sprawling size, its flavor of picaresque comedy and its fusion of family lore with national politics it more resembles Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." (The Wall Street Journal)
"A story that intertwines strangers into families, which we'll follow for a century, magic into everyday moments, and the story of a nation, Zambia." (NPR)
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"A rich, thick Zambian epic, The Old Drift blends real-life history with magical realism.... A striking debut." (USA Today 5 Books Not to Miss)
"In a novel that spans the breadth of Zambia’s precolonial past to its digital future, Serpell’s unbound imagination is often a thing of beauty.... It is in the familial space with its dramas of loves, betrayals, desires and dreams that [Serpell] excels. Her Zambian characters are especially brimming and compelling. In a nod to Leo Tolstoy, she eventually offers her readers a lovely kernel of an overarching theme that binds her characters across the passage of time and encapsulates her confident writing style: 'Every family is a war but some are more civil than others.'" (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
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Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the 15 years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past.
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Searing!
- By Susie Bright on 09-05-18
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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 Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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.
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What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker
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Glorious
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
- By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, Stephen King, Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Rebecca Mitchell, Michael Healy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
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Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
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A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
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Kabu Kabu
- By: Nnedi Okorafor, Whoopi Goldberg - foreword
- Narrated by: Yetide Badaki
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kabu kabu - unregistered, illegal Nigerian taxis - generally get you where you need to go. Nnedi Okorafor's Kabu Kabu, however, takes the listener to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations you didn't know you needed. This debut short-story collection by an award-winning author includes notable previously published material, a new novella cowritten with New York Times best-selling author Alan Dean Foster, six additional original stories, and a brief foreword by Whoopi Goldberg.
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FANTASTIC!
- By Rita on 11-14-19
By: Nnedi Okorafor, and others
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Nowhere is a Place
- By: Bernice McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.
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A Mother and Daughter Tear. It. Up.
- By Susie on 01-15-14
By: Bernice McFadden
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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The New Moon's Arms
- By: Nalo Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Gin Hammond
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Calamity is confronting two big transitions: the death of her beloved father and the beginning of menopause, a physical shift that has rekindled her gift for finding lost things. Suddenly, she is getting hot flashes that seem to forge objects out of thin air, most notably a four-year old boy. As Calamity takes the child into her care, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Then, Calamity must reawaken to the mysteries surrounding her own childhood and the early disappearance of her mother.
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What a joy
- By newmoon on 07-05-19
By: Nalo Hopkinson
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Southern Gods
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Eric G Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio statio - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.
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Big, Bold and Bright
- By John on 08-23-11
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A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
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Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors
- By: Nayomi Munaweera
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Yasodhara tells the story of her own Sinhala family, rich in love, with everything they could ask for. As a child in idyllic Colombo, social hierarchies, their parents’ ambitions, teenage love shape Yasodhara and her siblings’ lives, and, subtly, the differences between Tamil and Sinhala people; but the peace is shattered by the tragedies of war. Yasodhara's family escapes to Los Angeles. But Yasodhara's life has already become intertwined with a young Tamil girl's.
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Pronunciation
- By Mahidevran on 04-07-18
By: Nayomi Munaweera
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An Historian and not a Novelist
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Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
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P. G. Wodehouse Volume 2
- The Blandings Collection
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 45 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Audible Studios presents the second volume of the best-selling PG Wodehouse collection. In this volume, Stephen Fry lends his voice to the Blandings stories. This collection contains: Summer Lightning, Heavy Weather, Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, Lord Emsworth and Others, Uncle Fred in the Spring Time.
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Volume 1 is not sold in US
- By NJ on 01-21-22
By: P. G. Wodehouse
What listeners say about The Old Drift
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Trules
- 04-21-20
Brilliant
Brilliantly interwoven storytelling , cast of characters, Beautiful language, Challenging ideas, revolutionary politics, and great readers.
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- Sh
- 06-09-19
Supreme narration of an epic African saga.
Amazing. A narrative triumph! A book to listen to more than once both for the story and the voices.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Stephen Larson
- 11-13-19
Fantastic read!
everyone in the book has such an interesting life experience, and the glimpses into these joyful, tragic lives are given in such a way that one can feel the universal experience of humanity. This together with the uniqueness of the individual and those elements that make us ourselves. gripping!
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- SER
- 05-30-19
Maybe the author was overly ambitious?
The Old Drift is a multi-part saga. The story and writing hang together well in the first two parts, but then things get very messy in the third part. Too bad as the character development and plots and sub-plots are engrossing . Part 3 reads more like vignettes than the type of tight and effective story-telling in the first two parts.
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- Reuben
- 08-14-19
Excellent narration
This is a great story, but what was really amazing was the narration of Adjoa Andoh. The book has characters of many nationalities and mixed nationalities, and she hits the accents spot on.
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- Yurasek/Gilloon
- 06-19-19
Saga of 3 families in Zambia over a century
I loved this book about the history of Zambia told through the lives of 3 interconnected families, one black,one white, one brown.
There are memorable characters, a bit of magical realism, relationships and reconnections over 3 generations. I had to go back to the first chapter to read the setup of 3 family relationship that occurs due to a ferocious child of one family.
The Reader has an incredible ability to take on many African and European accents and though there were zillions of Zambians, each had their own cadence and personality. I had listened to a Angela Carter novel read by the same actor. She was 100 times more enjoyable on this adventure. She seems to choose wondrous , character-laden romps to narrate.
I highly recommend this book . Its worth every moment.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-06-23
A great read! Mwa bombeni Namwali!
I haven’t been pulled into a great read in along time.
This was an intriguing chronological tale of great characters and families. The interweaving of the stories into known historic events is genius!
The ‘epilogue’ summary of each chapter was brilliantly crafted and well read. Highlight of my read.
The characters came to life so vividly. I wanted to know and hear more about each of them.
It’s a gift to have relived my own childhood through some of the places and similar experiences mentioned in the book.
Thanks Namwali 😊😊
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- Nick Hirsch
- 04-16-19
On Par with the Greats
This was a slow rollercoaster of a story, with amazing performances that really brought the characters to life. It's a little of every kind of story.
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- Matthew
- 02-11-23
Unbelievable
I thought it was impossible for a single work to cover so many enormous topics over such a long period of time and still somehow stick the landing. Namwali Serpell has done it, she’s achieved that impossibility with a style and beauty that I have never seen before. Standing ovation, lifelong fan.
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- Jen Barlow
- 06-27-24
A Joy to listen to
Listening to the story being read by someone who was able to distinguish the many voices and accents was a delight. It enabled me to feel completely immersed in the story. I loved the combination of historical fiction with a mystical past and imagined tech-heavy future. I loved all the characters. The writing and performance will stay with me a long while.
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