The White Mandarin
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Narrated by:
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George Backman
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By:
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Dan Sherman
About this listen
John Polly enters Shanghai in 1948 on a muggy, velvet evening, just in time for the Communist takeover of China. It marks only his fourth month in America's newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. Over the next two decades, Polly will become The White Mandarin, a double agent buried so deep within the inner circle of the People's Republic as to shape the futures of both that nation and his own.
Dan Sherman's intricate, superbly crafted spy thriller follows Polly as he walks a dangerous tightrope of intrigue and suspense. As China rebuilds itself, Polly attempts to start a family in the intersection between the American intelligence system and the Asian drug trade. Can Polly keep his wife and daughter safe? Can he keep track of the shifting stories and changing allegiances in the CIA? Will his emotion get in the way of his mission?
Only pages into this stunning novel, listeners will easily understand why Sherman has earned comparison to the great John le Carré and Graham Greene. It is both a story of very personal love and loss and an insightful history of China between the rise of Chairman Mao and the 1972 visit by President Nixon. Anyone looking to understand the China of yesterday and today - its power, its flaws, its beauty - need look no further than The White Mandarin.
©1982 Dan Sherman; This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. (P)2015 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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By 1939, Anglo-American journalist John Russell has spent over a decade in Berlin, where his son lives with his mother. He writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as World War II approaches, he faces having to leave his son as well as his girlfriend of several years, a beautiful German starlet. When an acquaintance from his old communist days approaches him to do some work for the Soviets, Russell is reluctant, but he is unable to resist the offer.
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Overall great listen!
- By Patricia on 02-28-24
By: David Downing
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Hunters in the Dark
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From the novelist the New York Times compares to Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh, and Ian McEwan, an evocative new work of literary suspense. Adrift in Cambodia, Robert Grieve - pushing 30 and eager to sidestep a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher - decides to go AWOL. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future.
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Graham Greene
- By Foxhuntingman on 02-26-16
By: Lawrence Osborne
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The Quiet American
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Joseph Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Alden Pyle, an idealistic young American, is sent to Vietnam to promote democracy amidst the intrigue and violence of the French war with the Vietminh, while his friend, Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, looks on.
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Terrible narrator nearly derails Greene novel.
- By Richard on 07-12-12
By: Graham Greene
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Oil on Water
- By: Helon Habila
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In the oil-rich and environmentally devastated Nigerian Delta, a British oil executive's wife has been kidnapped. Two journalists - a young upstart, Rufus, and a once-great, now disillusioned veteran, Zaq - are sent to find her. In a story rich with atmosphere and taut with suspense, Oil on Water explores the conflict between idealism and cynical disillusionment in a journey full of danger and unintended consequences.
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Entertaining and Timely
- By Lynn on 07-16-11
By: Helon Habila
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Moscow Sting
- By: Alex Dryden
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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When Finn, a former British spy, is poisoned by a Russian assassin, his ex-boss Adrian, chief of MI6, wants vengeance. He also wants answers - information that only Finn's widow, Anna, knows. Taken to America for protection and information, the former Russian agent faces her greatest test: to ensure her freedom and protect her child, she must uncover the full truth before anyone else - even as friend and foe both set her in their sights.
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will keep you guessing right up to the end
- By Catherine J. Pondozzi on 11-24-12
By: Alex Dryden
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Mark of the Assassin
- Michael Osbourne, Book 1
- By: Daniel Silva
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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When a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky off the East Coast, the CIA scrambles to find the perpetrators. A body is discovered near the crash site with three bullets to the face: the calling card of a shadowy international assassin.
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Uncanny Portentous Prophecy
- By Snoodely on 10-27-13
By: Daniel Silva
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The Ghost Writer
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
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Too close to the truth?
- By carl801 on 11-24-07
By: Robert Harris
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Beautiful Animals
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.
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please offer more of this author's books
- By S. Liskey on 07-20-17
By: Lawrence Osborne
What listeners say about The White Mandarin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- McPrivate
- 08-24-16
Best Ever Spy story set in China.
Where does The White Mandarin rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
The Best! It's the number one spy story I ever read. This does not include Shakespeare, of course. I have a special affinity to his work. However, Jules Verne, was also extremely fun to listen to, so I'd have to rate him at the top as well. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea put me to sleep every night in a wonderful way. Still, Dan Sherman is becoming my number one go to author for spy stories. He is a wonderful writer.
Who was your favorite character and why?
John Polly, I believe, because he was a gentle soul in the midst of all the outrageous goings on in the secret world. Spies were dealing not only with US, Russian and Asian relations, but with the drug trade.
Which scene was your favorite?
The one in which John Polly first meets Kim and falls in love with her. After she is killed, I love the way he goes after the guy who did it and kills him right there in the street, without a thought for himself or what will happen to him. He is a very likable character.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
YES! But I also wanted to savor it, so I listened to it slowly over the course of a few days. I also listened to it more than once.
Any additional comments?
It was really well researched. It is almost as if the author, Dan Sherman, is Chinese himself, but he isn't. He is an American. The book has so much Asian flavor, and it really puts you there, right in the midst of the world of spies and espionage. It also is told over a span of 50 years, so you get the gist of the history too. What is really amazing is that The White Mandarin hasn't yet been made into a movie. It deserves to be.
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- CKO
- 06-04-17
1940-70's Sino-American relations
At first this book was a bit annoying with the Chinese accents but overall it was eye opening & fascinating.
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- Jan R Olsen
- 10-22-15
A view into the secret world of espionage
Well written book which gives insight into what really goes on in the world of espionage. Recommended to those interested in espionage and intelligence. It is at the same time an engaging account of the history of China from the late 1940s to President Nixon's historical China visit in 1972.
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1 person found this helpful