
The Samurai's Garden
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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David Shih
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By:
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Gail Tsukiyama
About this listen
The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.
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Story
Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage to the son of her father’s business associate would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man - an American sailor, a gaijin - and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.
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DO NOT LISTEN! Decent story, HORRIBLE narration!!!
- By David Meier on 05-07-20
By: Ana Johns
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The Brightest Star
- A Novel
- By: Gail Tsukiyama
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The beloved bestselling author of The Color of Air, Women of the Silk, and The Samurai's Garden returns with this magnificent historical novel based on the life of the luminous, groundbreaking actress Anna May Wong—the first and only Asian American woman to gain movie stardom in the early days of Hollywood.
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A force!
- By elbgwn on 10-25-24
By: Gail Tsukiyama
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Sweet Bean Paste
- By: Durian Sukegawa, Alison Watts - translator
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.
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Heartfelt Story between the unlikely friendship between an old lady in her 70s and a middle aged chef
- By Anonymous User on 05-24-25
By: Durian Sukegawa, and others
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Fifty Words for Rain
- A Novel
- By: Asha Lemmie
- Narrated by: Robin Eller, Siho Ellsmore, Katharine Lee McEwan, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity.
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Transformation of a bastered girl with Blue blood
- By Emiko Sugita Deri on 10-11-20
By: Asha Lemmie
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Kitchen
- By: Banana Yoshimoto
- Narrated by: Emily Zeller
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Mikage is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend, Yoichi, and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.
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First Time is the Charm
- By just asking for some common sense on 08-22-19
By: Banana Yoshimoto
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An Artist of the Floating World
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of an artist as an aging man, struggling through the wreckage of Japan's World War II experience. Ishiguro's first novel.
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An incongruous reader
- By Emeritus on 11-03-17
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
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The Moon in the Palace
- The Empress of Bright Moon, Book 1
- By: Weina Dai Randel
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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There is no easy path for a woman aspiring to power. A concubine at the palace learns quickly that there are many ways to capture the emperor's attention. Many paint their faces white and style their hair attractively, hoping to lure in the One Above All with their beauty. Some present him with fantastic gifts, such as jade pendants and scrolls of calligraphy, while others rely on their knowledge of seduction to draw his interest. But young Mei knows nothing of these womanly arts, yet she will give the emperor a gift he can never forget.
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One of the most annoying narrations
- By Foodiewife on 01-28-17
By: Weina Dai Randel
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The Night Tiger
- A Novel
- By: Yangsze Choo
- Narrated by: Yangsze Choo
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dance hall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.
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very satisfying
- By Ian Macdonald on 03-19-19
By: Yangsze Choo
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The Garden of Evening Mists
- By: Tan Twan Eng
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 15 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp.
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The best
- By Susan Gardner Bowers on 03-11-13
By: Tan Twan Eng
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold: A Toshikazu Kawaguchi Book Set
- By: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Narrated by: Arina Ii, Kevin Shen
- Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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What would you do if you could travel back in time? Discover the internationally bestselling novels of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, now a worldwide phenomenon and BookTok sensation, in this special new book set. Step inside Tokyo’s whimsical Café Funiculi Funicula and travel back in time with a cast of unforgettable characters.
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very profound, lost in translation?
- By Ashlyn C. on 10-06-23
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The Bastard of Istanbul
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.
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A tender gift from far away
- By Barbara on 11-07-07
By: Elif Shafak
Lovely story of gentle characters.
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Outstanding Story
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Lovely
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Historical and spiritual fiction, pulls you in...
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It became be long......
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It becomes so much more when you have real people. I really loved the three main characters.
Great story
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love love love
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It is a MUST read.
With the world being so “upside down”, it is so good to read a book that depicts nothing but goodness.
The narrator, David Shih, is excellent.
My thanks to all involved, JK.
ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL
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Japanese culture, past and present, is something I have become interested in since my last trip there this Spring. I have read Memoirs of a Geisha, Shogun, Wabi Sabi , and this book since my return. I only hope I can find another that I can enjoy as much as this one.
Wonderful story with characters I grew to love
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Driving. The author tells a very good story that is enjoyable, thoughtful and engaging. I lived it. I will audioread another!
Imagery and narration
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