The Short End of the Sonnenallee
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Narrated by:
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Kris Dyer
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Matthew Hendrickson
About this listen
‘A kind of miracle … Not only made me laugh (again and again) but brought tears to my eyes’ Jonathan Franzen
‘One of the most brilliant satirical novels about life in East Berlin’ New York Times
Thomas Brussig’s classic German satire, translated into English for the first time and introduced by Jonathan Franzen, is a comedic, moving account of life in East Berlin before the Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a satire set, literally, on the Sonnenallee, the famed "boulevard of the sun" in East Berlin.
Within this boulevard lives Michael, an adolescent who faces daily ridicule whenever he steps out of his apartment building and comes into view of the observation platform on the West side. "Look, a real Zonie. Can we take your picture?" Hopelessly in love with the most beautiful girl on the street, Michael is batted away in favour of the Western boys who are free to cross the border. What chance does Michael have, and how much trouble will he get into by pursuing her?
Laugh-out-loud funny and unabashedly silly, Brussig's novel follows the bizarre, grotesque quotidian details of life in the German Democratic Republic. As this new translation shows, the ideas at its heart – freedom, democracy and life’s fundamental hilarity – hold great relevance for today.
‘Gentle comedy … Funny, rueful’ Telegraph
©2023 Thomas Brussig, Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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Slumberland
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city's dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods, the prevent defense, and Wynton Marsalis in search of his artistic - and spiritual - other.
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Gen Xr's Delight
- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-22
By: Paul Beatty
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In Pharaoh's Army
- Memories of the Lost War
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor, and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic.
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Boring Waste of Time
- By Ethan on 08-21-22
By: Tobias Wolff
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
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The Godmother
- By: Hannelore Cayre, Stephanie Smee - translator
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Patience Portefeux, 53, an underpaid Franco-Arab judicial interpreter for the Ministry of Justice who specialises in telephone tapping. Widowed after the sudden death of her husband, Patience is now wedged between university fees for her two grown-up daughters and nursing home costs for her ageing mother. She’s laboured for 25 years to keep everyone’s heads above water.
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Had me at "my family were crooks."
- By Patricia on 03-04-23
By: Hannelore Cayre, and others
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Yours Until Death
- Varg Veum
- By: Gunnar Staalesen
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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An unbearably tense novel of revenge, murder, bereavement and the destructive force of passion. The single-mother families of the isolated community under the shadow of the Pyderhorn, Bergen's greatest mountain, are being terrorised by a teenage gang. But teenage violence is nothing compared to what awaits detective Varg Veum when he gets to know the blue-eyed Wenche Andersen.
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Great Scandinavian Mystery!
- By Peoko on 07-12-17
By: Gunnar Staalesen