The Old Drift
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $27.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Adjoa Andoh
-
Richard E. Grant
-
Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
-
By:
-
Namwali Serpell
About this listen
"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)
©2019 Namwali Serpell (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
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
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Glory
- A Novel
- By: NoViolet Bulawayo
- Narrated by: Chipo Chung
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
NoViolet Bulawayo’s bold new novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, Glory shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely.
-
-
I am of two minds
- By B.A.B. on 03-27-22
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
- By: Shehan Karunatilaka
- Narrated by: Shivantha Wijesinha
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali.
-
-
Absolutely Splendid...
- By Paul Frandano on 02-07-23
-
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
-
Birnam Wood
- A Novel
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place.
-
-
Outstanding thriller w/ exceptional character development
- By Bradley T. Collins on 04-21-23
By: Eleanor Catton
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Glory
- A Novel
- By: NoViolet Bulawayo
- Narrated by: Chipo Chung
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
NoViolet Bulawayo’s bold new novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, Glory shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely.
-
-
I am of two minds
- By B.A.B. on 03-27-22
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
- By: Shehan Karunatilaka
- Narrated by: Shivantha Wijesinha
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali.
-
-
Absolutely Splendid...
- By Paul Frandano on 02-07-23
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
The Silmarillion
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
- Narrated by: Andy Serkis
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. Included on the recording are several shorter works. The Ainulindalë is a myth of the Creation and in the Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The Akallabêth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age.
-
-
TIPS when reading this book:
- By Anonymous User on 06-29-23
By: J. R. R. Tolkien, and others
-
The Bangalore Detectives Club
- By: Harini Nagendra
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she’s resigned herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of the party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace and quiet—and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene. When a vulnerable woman is connected to the crime, Kaveri becomes determined to save her and launches a private investigation to find the killer, tracing his steps from an illustrious brothel to an Englishman’s mansion.
-
-
Good concept, poor execution
- By Amazon Customer on 09-01-22
By: Harini Nagendra
-
The Women of Chateau Lafayette
- By: Stephanie Dray
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert, Emma Bering, Rachel L. Jacobs
- Length: 23 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An epic saga from New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy.
-
-
An absolute masterpiece of a book!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-15-21
By: Stephanie Dray
-
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
- A Novel
- By: Deepa Anappara
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, Himesh Patel, Antonio Aakeel
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Down market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends, Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.
-
-
Striking Postcolonial Perspective But Falls Short
- By Joe Kraus on 02-11-20
By: Deepa Anappara
-
Hula
- A Novel
- By: Jasmin Iolani Hakes
- Narrated by: Mapuana Makia
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hi'i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its contributions to hula and her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii, but there’s a lot she doesn’t understand. She’s never met her legendary grandmother and her mother has never revealed the identity of her father. Worse, unspoken divides within her tight-knit community have started to grow, creating fractures whose origins are somehow entangled with her own family history.
-
-
Ua mau ke ea o ka `aina i ka pono
- By Mele65 on 05-12-23
-
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
-
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
-
The Clockmaker's Daughter
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Joanne Froggatt
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor in rural Oxfordshire. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe’s life is in ruins. Over 150 years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items.
-
-
The Clockmaker's Daughter
- By KBoat on 10-21-18
By: Kate Morton
-
Black Cake
- A Novel
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman, Simone Mcintyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
-
-
Wonderful Listen
- By Regina on 02-04-22
-
The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
-
-
A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
Mordew
- By: Alex Pheby
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.
-
-
Next level creepy fantasy with spectacular narration!
- By Casey on 10-29-22
By: Alex Pheby
Critic reviews
"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)
"Namwali Serpell’s vibrant, intellectually rich debut novel, The Old Drift, is in keeping in that tradition, and like any good nation-hoovering novel, it too refuses to conform to expectations.... This oddball cast of characters simply represents the joys of the picaresque novel, in which the author’s set design is intentionally surreal and ironic.... Serpell is a natural social novelist, capable of conjuring a Dickensian range of characters with a painterly eye for detail." (The Washington Post)
Related to this topic
-
The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
-
-
A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
-
-
sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
-
Praise Song for the Butterflies
- A Novel
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Searing!
- By Susie Bright on 09-05-18
-
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
-
The Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker
-
Glorious
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Gruesome violence
- By Marilyn on 11-22-11
-
The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
-
-
A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
-
-
sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
-
Praise Song for the Butterflies
- A Novel
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Searing!
- By Susie Bright on 09-05-18
-
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- By: Monique Roffey
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By Crystal on 10-31-12
By: Monique Roffey
-
The Incarnations
- A Novel
- By: Susan Barker
- Narrated by: Timo Chen, Joy Osmanski
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
What was that you said?
- By cecil reniche-smith on 08-29-15
By: Susan Barker
-
Glorious
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Gruesome violence
- By Marilyn on 11-22-11
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
-
Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
-
Kabu Kabu
- By: Nnedi Okorafor, Whoopi Goldberg - foreword
- Narrated by: Yetide Badaki
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
FANTASTIC!
- By Rita on 11-14-19
By: Nnedi Okorafor, and others
-
Nowhere is a Place
- By: Bernice McFadden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
A Mother and Daughter Tear. It. Up.
- By Susie on 01-15-14
By: Bernice McFadden
-
Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
-
Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
-
The New Moon's Arms
- By: Nalo Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Gin Hammond
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
What a joy
- By newmoon on 07-05-19
By: Nalo Hopkinson
-
Southern Gods
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Eric G Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Big, Bold and Bright
- By John on 08-23-11
-
A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
-
Island of a Thousand Mirrors
- By: Nayomi Munaweera
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
Pronunciation
- By Mahidevran on 04-07-18
By: Nayomi Munaweera
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Ducks, Newburyport
- By: Lucy Ellmann
- Narrated by: Stephanie Ellyne
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda. But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate? When are you allowed to start swearing?
-
-
Stephanie Ellyne really brings the book to life
- By Shashank on 02-27-20
By: Lucy Ellmann
-
The Hemingses of Monticello
- An American Family
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 30 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.
-
-
Worried at first
- By Phillip Goodson on 12-13-08
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
-
The Emperor of Ocean Park
- By: Stephen L. Carter
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 26 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the era of the Nixon and Reagan presidencies, this novel examines the American conscience while inviting us into the glittering world of the East Coast legal community. Stephen L. Carter's book follows black Ivy League law professor Talcott Garland as he investigates the death of his father, Judge Oliver Garland, the eponymous "Emperor."
-
-
Not a bad book but where was the editor?
- By Maria on 04-23-04
-
The Far Pavilions
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 48 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When The Far Pavilions was first published 19 years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind." From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M. M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich, and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.
-
-
Heroism, adventure, sadistic cruelty, and love.
- By Velan on 02-19-13
By: M. M. Kaye
-
The Deluge
- By: Stephen Markley
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Gibson Frazier, and others
- Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat.
-
-
Couldn’t get into it.
- By Review Reviewer on 01-20-23
By: Stephen Markley
-
Ducks, Newburyport
- By: Lucy Ellmann
- Narrated by: Stephanie Ellyne
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda. But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate? When are you allowed to start swearing?
-
-
Stephanie Ellyne really brings the book to life
- By Shashank on 02-27-20
By: Lucy Ellmann
-
The Hemingses of Monticello
- An American Family
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 30 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.
-
-
Worried at first
- By Phillip Goodson on 12-13-08
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
-
The Emperor of Ocean Park
- By: Stephen L. Carter
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 26 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the era of the Nixon and Reagan presidencies, this novel examines the American conscience while inviting us into the glittering world of the East Coast legal community. Stephen L. Carter's book follows black Ivy League law professor Talcott Garland as he investigates the death of his father, Judge Oliver Garland, the eponymous "Emperor."
-
-
Not a bad book but where was the editor?
- By Maria on 04-23-04
-
The Far Pavilions
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 48 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When The Far Pavilions was first published 19 years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind." From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M. M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich, and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.
-
-
Heroism, adventure, sadistic cruelty, and love.
- By Velan on 02-19-13
By: M. M. Kaye
-
The Deluge
- By: Stephen Markley
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Gibson Frazier, and others
- Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat.
-
-
Couldn’t get into it.
- By Review Reviewer on 01-20-23
By: Stephen Markley
-
The Books of Jacob
- A Novel
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gilli Messer
- Length: 35 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
-
-
Dense & Difficult But Rewarding
- By Nick O. on 02-28-22
By: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
JR
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering it's own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity training, JR captures the listener in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, and stumble through our words - through our lives - while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes JR the extraordinary novel that it is.
-
-
Possibly superior as an audio book
- By Peregrine on 12-12-10
By: William Gaddis
-
Wanderers
- A Novel
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Xe Sands
- Length: 32 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon, they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.
-
-
Recommended, with some issues
- By Allan T. Maule on 07-29-19
By: Chuck Wendig
-
Kristin Lavransdatter (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
- The Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy
- By: Sigrid Undset, Tiina Nunnally - editor translator, Brad Leithauser - introduction
- Narrated by: Nina Yndis, Stephen Graybill
- Length: 47 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses audiences in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.
-
-
Ridiculous, excessive, relentless guilt.
- By T on 07-11-24
By: Sigrid Undset, and others
-
Mordew
- By: Alex Pheby
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.
-
-
Next level creepy fantasy with spectacular narration!
- By Casey on 10-29-22
By: Alex Pheby
-
The Romanovs
- 1613-1918
- By: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrated by: Simon Beale
- Length: 28 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence, and wild extravagance, with a global cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries, and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin.
-
-
Scholarly but gripping
- By William on 06-16-16
-
The Great Bridge
- The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 27 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This monumental book tells the enthralling story of one of the greatest accomplishments in our nation's history, the building of what was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Brooklyn Bridge rose out of the expansive era following the Civil War, when Americans believed all things were possible.
-
-
An Historian and not a Novelist
- By Tim on 06-01-12
By: David McCullough
-
Wolf Hall
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Simon Slater
- Length: 24 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn.
-
-
Divorced, beheaded, died...
- By Tim on 09-30-11
By: Hilary Mantel
-
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 Furrows
- A Novel
- By: Namwali Serpell
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza, Ryan Vincent Anderson, Dion Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they’re alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children. As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars.
-
-
Appreciate the effort, but not a fan
- By N.Williams on 02-26-23
By: Namwali Serpell
-
The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
-
The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
-
-
Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
What listeners say about The Old Drift
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Trules
- 04-21-20
Brilliant
Brilliantly interwoven storytelling , cast of characters, Beautiful language, Challenging ideas, revolutionary politics, and great readers.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
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
- 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!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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 😊😊
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 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.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!