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The World and All That It Holds
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Aleksandar Mikic
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
Long-listed, Washington Post Best Books of the Year, 2023
Nominee, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2024
"Narrator Aleksandar Mikic's enchanting narration gives voice to the interplay of romance and violence."—Booklist
"The audiobook is performed in epic fashion by Bosnian actor Aleksandar Mikic, whose accents and syntax embody the many people Rafael meets as he journeys from Saravejo to Shanghai in his quest to escape war and persecution."—Bookpage
This program includes a bonus conversation between the author and book editor.
The World and All That It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.
As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It’s not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can’t put in perspective.
And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto’s protector and lover.
Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto’s love for Osman—with the occasional opiatic interlude—that keeps him going.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Critic reviews
“Aleksandar Hemon’s The World and All That It Holds is one of the finest novels I’ve ever read, and like all great stories, it refuses to be pigeonholed. It’s a road novel, an immigrant tale, a ghost story, a family portrait, a mystery, a historical epic, a war novel, and yes, a love story—it is all that and more, a feat of
unfettered literary bravura. In short, a masterpiece.”—RABIH ALAMEDDINE, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope
"Hemonites rejoice! The master is back and he has forged a remarkable tale of love and war alongside his own 20th Century Silk Road. From Sarajevo to Shanghai, every sentence, every paragraph is a sensuous and often hilarious delight. Not a Hemonite yet? I envy you your very first encounter with one of the world's greatest writers."—GARY SHTEYNGART, author of Our Country Friends
"The World and All That It Holds is a twisting, turning epic rooted in love in all its forms; an odyssey of statelessness; a haunted museum of history ranging from Sarajevo to Shanghai and Jerusalem; and an apothecary of wit, folklore and unexpectable sentences. This life-stuffed novel is Aleksandar Hemon’s masterpiece.”—DAVID MITCHELL, author of Cloud Atlas
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Psychologist Loche Newirth becomes hunted when he sees a painting that opens a window onto the afterlife. An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness, and beyond. The first part of Michael B. Koep's the Newirth Mythology The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder, and madness. Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: The 50-foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating?
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Good story - well written
- By Amy Q on 05-17-20
By: Michael B. Koep
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The Passion
- By: Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues, Daniel Pirrie
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meets their singular destiny.
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Excellence.
- By Scottie V. on 10-07-19
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The Six-Gun Tarot [Dramatized Adaptation]
- Golgotha, Book 1
- By: R. S. Belcher
- Narrated by: full cast, Dylan Lynch, Tim Getman, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Original Recording
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Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker's wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone's business, may know more about the town's true origins than he's letting on.
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Fantastic audio drama
- By C.T. on 06-21-21
By: R. S. Belcher
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The Magician of Lublin
- By: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Narrated by: Larry Keith
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The Magician can dazzle the crowds with his sleight of hand, climb to any height, open any lock. Fearlessly, he does death-defying tricks in theaters all over Poland. At home, his sweet Jewish wife waits for him to return from the city. In the city, his adoring mistresses wait for him to return from home. He holds the key to all hearts, but his own is beset with confusion.
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Complex Masterpiece
- By Evan on 09-11-08
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Birds Without Wings
- By: Louis de Bernieres
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds Without Wings is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women (Armenians, Christians, and Muslims) whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness; and many more.
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Not for the faint of heart
- By a on 01-03-05
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White Dog Fell from the Sky
- By: Eleanor Morse
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Botswana, 1976: Isaac Muthethe thinks he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.
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Unexpectedly Stunning Work!
- By Kathi on 03-15-13
By: Eleanor Morse
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Unfettered
- Tales By Masters of Fantasy
- By: Terry Brooks, Patrick Rothfuss, Robert Jordan, and others
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Marc Vietor, Bronson Pinchot, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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You define life or it defines you. In Shawn Speakman’s case, it was both. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, Shawn quickly accrued a massive medical debt that he did not have the ability to pay. That’s when New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks offered to donate a short story that Shawn could sell to help alleviate those bills—and suggested he ask the same of his other writer friends. Unfettered is the result: An anthology built in order to relieve that debt, featuring short stories by some of the best fantasy writers in the genre.
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A TRULY BAD COLLECTION OF DOGS
- By Randall on 12-21-18
By: Terry Brooks, and others
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Utopia 58
- By: Daniel Arenson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine a perfect society. A world with no racism, sexism, or ageism. A utopia. In Utopia 58, everyone is equal. Everyone must be equal. Too beautiful? A mask will hide that pretty face. Too tall? We'll saw your legs down to size. Too male or female? The surgeon's knife will fix that. Too smart? A buzzer in your skull will drown out all that pesky thinking. You will be equal. Like it or not. Utopia 58, built atop the ruins of North America, created perfect harmony. A society with no race, gender, or age. Pure equality. KB209 was born into this utopia.
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totally spellbinding
- By Southern girl on 08-27-19
By: Daniel Arenson
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The Gods of Tango
- A Novel
- By: Carolina De Robertis
- Narrated by: Carolina De Robertis
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, carrying only a small trunk and her father's cherished violin, leaves her Italian village for a new home, and a new husband, in Argentina. Arriving in Buenos Aires, she discovers that he has been killed, but she remains: living in a tenement, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. Still, she is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets.
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A rousing tale
- By Jean on 07-24-15
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Once We Were Here
- By: Christopher Cosmos
- Narrated by: Gary Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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On October 28, 1940, Mussolini provides Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas with an ultimatum - either allow Axis forces to occupy their country or face war - and Greece’s response is swift: “Oxi!” they say. “No!” In a small village nestled against the radiant waters of the Aegean Sea, Alexei, the son of a local fisherman, and his best friend Costa - who were both born on the same night eighteen years earlier and have been like brothers ever since - leave their homes, like all the other young men in their village and throughout Greece, to bravely fight for their country.
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Great story...
- By E. H. on 12-09-20
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Above Us Only Sky
- By: Michele Young-Stone
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Prudence Eleanor Vilkas was born with a pair of wings molded to her back. Considered a birth defect, her wings were surgically removed, leaving only the ghost of them behind. Growing up in Los Vientos, Florida, Prudence meets her long-estranged Lithuanian grandfather and discovers a miraculous lineage beating and pulsing with past Lithuanian bird-women.
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I'm So Glad I Listened to It!
- By Elizabeth on 08-22-16
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Gods of Jade and Shadow
- By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Narrated by: Yetta Gottesman
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it - and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother.
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I can’t finish this
- By zoomcity on 08-07-19
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Annie Dunne
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
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Splendid
- By Shady on 06-21-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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All Our Broken Idols
- By: Paul M.M. Cooper
- Narrated by: Lara Sawalha
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Assyria, in the reign of Ashurbanipal. For Aurya and her daydreaming brother, Sharo, every day is a struggle for survival, as they dodge the beatings of their drunken father and scrabble for scraps of food. One violent evening, everything changes. Soon, they are on the barge of King Ashurbanipal, bound for the beautiful, near-mythical city of Nineveh.
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What a great book!
- By Daniel on 07-14-21
By: Paul M.M. Cooper
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What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
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We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
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What listeners say about The World and All That It Holds
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon04
- 04-04-23
An experience as much a a great novel!
Hemon somehow brought me into the characters and all of the places they went! A great book!
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- JPI
- 02-18-23
Amazing
Hemon’s prose is mesmerizing and the narrator does a fantastic job here. The poignant love stories at the heart of the book - love for people, family, place of origin, carry the protagonists through many 20th century horrors and leave them with strangely dignified lives. I was sad to see it end.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bert
- 02-12-23
Could not finish.
I tried but could not finish this book. I stopped while reading Tashkent. The voices were good but the story was too confusing.
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- Tim
- 04-13-23
Epilogue and interview changed my mind
I was all ready to give this book a tepid two stars. The first half is a confusing real time mixed with memories and dreams, and frustratingly frequent sentences in Bosnian, Spanish, German, French and perhaps others Just where am I in this story? Upon finishing I listened to the bonus Epilogue and Editor and Author interview included. The germination of the novel’s story is revealed as are the author’s reflections on war, history, love and more. Then it made sense. The second half is a much clearer narrative. It is a difficult read/listen but try the Epilogue and interview first.
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1 person found this helpful