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The Wrong End of the Telescope

By: Rabih Alameddine
Narrated by: Lameece Issaq
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Publisher's summary

By National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.

Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of 30 years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses, bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them.

Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.

©2021 Rabih Alameddine. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2021 Audible, Inc.
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What listeners say about The Wrong End of the Telescope

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Book okay. Narrator sarcastic

This was an OK book, well written and also self-serving. LGBTQ main characters. Read for a Physician Book Club and was a good choice because lots to discuss . I hated the narrator. Her voice was fine but her tone was sarcastic. The author writes with sarcastic humor and cynicism but the narration emphasized it to an unpleasant extent. Either read the written version or speed up the audible to 1.5 or higher.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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A must read…

I keep telling myself I don’t miss anything about my homeland, all I remember is pain, fear, homophobia etc… until I open a rabih alamedine book. Then something as insignificant as description of smell of saffron, breaks me… he did it again. Way too real, way too close to heart. I probably will listen to the book a few more times like all his books

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Engaging story, well told

Narrator was fabulous. Story profound. Takes America to task for all the right reasons. Writing was really good.

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2 people found this helpful