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The Parisian
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
Midhat Kamal is the son of a wealthy textile merchant from Nablus, a town in Ottoman Palestine. A dreamer, a romantic, an aesthete, in 1914 he leaves to study medicine in France, and falls in love. When Midhat returns to Nablus to find it under British rule, and the entire region erupting with nationalist fervor, he must find a way to cope with his conflicting loyalties and the expectations of his community.
The story of Midhat's life develops alongside the idea of a nation, as he and those close to him confront what it means to strive for independence in a world that seems on the verge of falling apart. Against a landscape of political change that continues to define the Middle East, The Parisian explores questions of power and identity, enduring love, and the uncanny ability of the past to disrupt the present.
Lush and immersive, and devastating in its power, The Parisian is an elegant, richly imagined debut from a dazzling new voice in fiction.
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The turn of the 20th century finds 14-year-old Batya in the Russian countryside, fleeing with her family endless pogroms. Desperate, her father leaps at the opportunity to marry Batya to a worldly, wealthy stranger who can guarantee his daughter an easy life and passage to America. Feeling like a princess in a fairytale, Batya leaves her old life behind as she is whisked away to a new world. But soon, she discovers that she’s entered a waking nightmare. Her new “husband” does indeed bring her to America.
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brilliant novel based on shocking truth
- By Rochelle Jewel Shapiro on 07-05-20
By: Talia Carner
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The Traitor
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the summer of 1942, as war rages across Europe, a series of anonymous leaflets appears around the University of Munich, speaking out against escalating Nazi atrocities. The leaflets are hidden in public places, or mailed to addresses selected at random from the phone book. Natalya Petrovich, a student, knows who is behind the leaflets - a secret group called the White Rose, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends. As a volunteer nurse on the Russian front, Natalya witnessed the horrors of war first-hand. She willingly enters the White Rose's circle....
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Not all the Germans are guilty.
- By Judy Harley on 09-18-20
By: V.S. Alexander
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The Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
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Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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The Bermondsey Bookshop
- By: Mary Gibson
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss' struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets. Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn't long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.
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A glimpse into the past
- By Luci-Lu on 10-27-21
By: Mary Gibson
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House of Trelawney
- By: Hannah Rothschild
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The seat of the Trelawney family for over 700 years, Trelawney Castle was once the jewel of the Cornish coast. Each successive Earl spent with abandon, turning the house and grounds into a sprawling, extravagant palimpsest of wings, turrets, and follies. But as the centuries passed the Earls of Trelawney, their ambition dulled by generations of pampered living, failed to develop other skills.
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Really fun read
- By Ruthi on 04-12-20
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Fifteen Postcards
- The Old Curiosity Shop, Book 1
- By: Kirsten McKenzie
- Narrated by: Tracey Llewelyn
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Determined to save the antiques store she has inherited from ruin after the unexplained disappearance of her parents, Sarah Lester discovers a jumbled collection of vintage postcards that leads her on a journey through time. Unprepared for the story the postcards weave about their reclusive former owner, Sarah’s life is thrown into disarray as she is transported to Victorian London, colonial New Zealand, and to the British Raj in 19th-century India.
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Disappointing and disorganized
- By Miranda on 03-16-22
By: Kirsten McKenzie
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Virgins of Paradise
- By: Barbara Wood
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jasmine and Camelia Rasheed grow to womanhood under the watchful eye of their grandmother inside the walls surrounding a beautiful house on Virgins of Paradise Street in exotic Cairo. They come of age in society in which the subjugation of women is assumed - they must wear veils, are forbidden to leave the house, have no independent rights, and are circumcised to ensure purity and obedience.
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eye opening
- By C Ohana on 11-13-08
By: Barbara Wood
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Death at Greenway
- A Novel
- By: Lori Rader-Day
- Narrated by: Moira Quirk
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the award-winning author of The Day I Died and The Lucky One, a captivating suspense novel about nurses during World War II who come to Agatha Christie’s holiday estate to care for evacuated children, but when a body is discovered nearby, the idyllic setting becomes host to a deadly mystery.
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Wonderful story & characters that kept me company
- By Kim Fountain on 10-24-21
By: Lori Rader-Day
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The Heiress
- The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh
- By: Molly Greeley
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh was prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and now the young woman must take the opium-heavy tincture every day. Growing up sheltered and confined, removed from sunshine and fresh air, the pale and overly slender Anne grew up with few companions except her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Throughout their childhoods, it was understood that Darcy and Anne would marry and combine their vast estates of Pemberley and Rosings. But Darcy does not love Anne or want her.
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A beautiful work of historical fiction
- By Alex M on 02-21-21
By: Molly Greeley
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The Winemakers
- A Novel of Wine and Secrets
- By: Jan Moran
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Years ago, the Rosetta family's hard-won dreams of staking their claim in the vineyards of California came to fruition. Now high-spirited, passionate Caterina Rosetta, who has inherited both her mother's talent for crafting the finest wines and also her indomitable will, wants nothing more than to win her mother's approval and work at her side. But that can never happen, because Caterina is keeping a secret that could ruin her: a daughter of her own, fathered by the love of her life, who left her without explanation.
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awesome.
- By Joe C. Smith on 04-25-21
By: Jan Moran
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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Two Crosses
- Secrets of the Cross, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth Musser
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.
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Faith, Romance, Spies, and Fascinating History
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-19
By: Elizabeth Musser
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Drags on and on.
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The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill.
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Minor Detail
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Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba - the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people - and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims, they capture a Palestinian teenager, and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand. Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder.
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At the end of summer 2017, Anna Funder found herself at a moment of peak overload. Family obligations and household responsibilities were crushing her soul and taking her away from her writing deadlines. She needed help, and George Orwell came to her rescue. "I’ve always loved Orwell," Funder writes, "his self-deprecating humor, his laser vision about how power works, and who it works on." So after rereading and savoring books Orwell had written, she devoured six major biographies tracing his life and work. But then she read about his forgotten wife, and it was a revelation.
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Intriguingly compelling!
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On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.
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A Palestinian Family in Exile
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As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been.
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Don’t narrate your own books!
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What listeners say about The Parisian
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cecilia O'Leary
- 03-31-24
Compelling – highly recommend
Great story interwoven with historical events told in a compelling way, The narrator’s voice draws you in immediately. Highly recommend.
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- Andrea Jacobs
- 02-11-20
great story
wonderful wandering tale, great characters and storytelling. I loved it and look forward to reading more from Isabella Hammad.
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- RosiePosie
- 03-25-20
A Literary Jewel
What a story, woven into the historical background of Palestine. A man’s life examined from within. Loved reading this escape into another land and time. I’ll remember these characters.
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- Lisa K.
- 10-06-23
Gorgeous prose and a mesmerizing story
I know just a little about the history of this part of the world from someone who grew up there and holds it dear to her heart. Perhaps that influences my review. The author surrounds the reader with imagery and language that recreates that time and place. Amidst the history is a story of relationships and the unexpected that occurs in one’s life. The narrator was of a piece with the prose.
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- Felice
- 06-14-19
Phenomenal story!
Absolutely loved the writing style of this young author. Highlights the need for all of us to see the gray areas of personal and political conflicts (things are very nuanced.) I appreciated how the character is perceived as "other"not just in Europe but in his homeland upon his return and how the author strikes just the right balance so that his situation doesn't become a strident caricature. Can't wait to see what this author will write next. (**Too bad the publisher misspelled her last name on the audiobook artwork!!! HAMMAD, not Hammand)
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6 people found this helpful
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- Mona
- 07-18-24
Great historical fiction
Too bad the narrator butchered the Arabic phrases. It really bothered me and too away from the story. I wish I read rather than listened. If you speak Arabic, choose the book not audio!
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- Placeholder
- 06-16-19
Overly ambitious
Historical fiction based on the author’s great grandfather. I was especially interested in the historical background, but it was force fed, and was not an organic part of the story. In addition, the audiobook narrator would have benefited from listening to some Arabic natives before attempting the basic words.
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9 people found this helpful
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- malita
- 01-30-24
The historical time frame chosen
It is beautifully written. I appreciated the historical time frame for the story. I related to how individuals make decisions for themselves in the midst of huge altering world events happening without completely being aware of it, keeping hope alive for better times .
I wish The narrator could pronounce the Arabic verses better, it was simply not even adequate, it took
Away from the beauty of the writing .
Overall I am glad I listened to this story.
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- EB
- 08-29-24
The reader is very annoying
The book itself is great, but I had to get the printed version, because the narrator is just unbearable. She breaks out in yelling and screeching, based on her personal perception of the text without any justification. Her French is great, though
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- Susan
- 05-24-19
Excellent historical novel
This is a view of the Middle East I was only vaguely aware of. I had read the history, but sometimes it takes a work of fiction to flesh out the facts, to give one a sense of what it just might have been like to be alive at that time. Beautifully written and read.
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5 people found this helpful