
This Strange Eventful History
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Claire Messud
About this listen
An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.
Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is “a tour de force … one of those rare novels that a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters” (Yiyun Li).
“A choral mural of sweep and scope that knows just when to render the historical personal, Claire Messud’s epic is above all a wise, wary, yet love-struck chronicle of how the selves we strive to make become ‘colonized’ by family.”—Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus
©2024 Claire Messud (P)2024 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would be trained for three years as a servant of the British Empire, overseeing the local policemen in Burma. Navigating the social, racial, and class politics of his fellow British at the same time as he learned the local languages and struggled to control his men would prove difficult enough. But doing all of this while grappling with his own self-worth, his sense that he was not cut out for this, is soon overwhelming for the young Blair.
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Glorious writing
- By Nina Jacobson on 02-21-24
By: Paul Theroux
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I Heard Her Call My Name
- A Memoir of Transition
- By: Lucy Sante
- Narrated by: Lucy Sante
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, from drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life was a performance. She was presenting a facade, even to herself.
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I'm so glad I read this book
- By Judy in Salt Lake on 03-09-25
By: Lucy Sante
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The Burning Girl
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Morgan Hallett
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A bracing, hypnotic, coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children. Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship.
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Notable more for the ideas an insights than story.
- By Edward J Bridge on 11-05-17
By: Claire Messud
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Kant's Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature.
By: Claire Messud
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Playground
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Siegerman, Eunice Wong, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
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What a tremendous story
- By Deb Hatch on 11-08-24
By: Richard Powers
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Headshot
- A Novel
- By: Rita Bullwinkel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country.
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Wonderful Narrator
- By love it on 08-09-24
By: Rita Bullwinkel
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Western Lane
- By: Chetna Maroo
- Narrated by: Maya Soroya
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
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Quiet story that is really interesting
- By Garth on 06-11-23
By: Chetna Maroo
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Black Butterflies
- A Novel
- By: Priscilla Morris
- Narrated by: Rachel Atkins, Priscilla Morris
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect makeshift barricades, splitting the city into ethnic enclaves. Each morning, the people who live there—whether Muslim, Croat, or Serb—push the barriers aside. When violence erupts and becomes, finally, unavoidable, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety in England. She stays behind, reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a few weeks. As the city falls under siege, everything she loves about her home is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops.
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Beautiful prose -simple story
- By Cco on 02-10-25
By: Priscilla Morris
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Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
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Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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This One Should Win
- By K. Bella Bestia on 10-13-24
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Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
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Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
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Star 111
- By: Lutz Seiler, Tess Lewis - translator
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge and Walter, following a secret dream they've harbored all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father's car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations.
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About 30% incomprehensible
- By Eric on 01-27-25
By: Lutz Seiler, and others
What listeners say about This Strange Eventful History
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dr. J. Adrienne Roth
- 01-05-25
Beautifully written. Needed editing.
I love generational novels, and this one brought me to new lands, new cultures in their influence on the characters. I think the story itself was too long and much that was discussed was not necessary
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- Judith C. Morris
- 01-10-25
Lots of characters
I am sitting on the fence with this one. At times I was too confused with who was doing what. I did get together for the last third. I think sometimes this is my problem with audio books.
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- JulieFH
- 08-02-24
Deep exploration of character; interesting historic backdrop
Engaging and well-connected story. I really enjoyed learning a little bit about the cultural groups and dynamics in Algeria and Greece particularly. Initially, my expectation was that there would have been more history —- that the events during WWII would have been more detailed. However, this is more about the characters and family dynamics as they relate to the cultures they are products of. Good read but was lacking something to totally engross and make it great.
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2 people found this helpful
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- RK
- 08-21-24
Achingly beautiful
This generational tale runs slow and deep, and so it is to be read, savoring every sentence. There are multiple POV characters, each with their own aspect yet casting light on all the others, like facets of a diamond, and I particularly appreciate the complexity of their intertwining stories and their very human personalities. No one is flatly good or bad, no feeling is trite, no turn of the plot is predictable except, perhaps, death. The fictional family is based on the author's family, and Chloe -- the only character narrated in 1st person -- is clearly the author herself. She penetrates the minds of her elders with love, compassion, and nuance, and draws from their small but soaring lives a philosophy that feeds the reader's soul. I wept several times as I listened to it and could barely force myself to turn it off. The narrator captures the spirit of the book well. A luminous gem.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bluebird
- 05-21-24
accents drove me nuts
I read great reviews for this book and was anxious to download it. I have two problems with it. First, the accents are a serious distraction, I've stopped the audio at times to get a break from them. Second the book is so darn earnest.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jennifer L Pepe
- 03-17-25
7 ages of man
it took almost until the end before I caught the connection to the 7 ages of man.
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- Thomp/Suis
- 05-17-24
Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
I had been looking forward to listening to this new book by Claire Messud, both for her reputation as a writer and for the subject matter. I purchased the audiobook on the day of publication. Cassandra Campbell has a lovely voice, and I enjoyed her reading of Where the Crawdads Sings. However. A big however. In this book, the characters are multinational, many of them multilingual, with complex personal histories in Beirut, Algiers, Salonica, Paris, Poland, and elsewhere. Understandably, this presents a challenge in voicing the different characters with regard to their accents. Unfortunately, Ms. Campbell, apparently with the assent of the recording's director, has opted for an unbelievably heavy approach, especially with the French accent for the central characters. The "zeess" and "zatt" for "this" and "that" are so thick you can cut them with a couteau - to the point of parody. This is apparent very early in the book with the two young French pied-noir children, a brother and sister, who are in exile in Algiers, and who speak to each other in such heavy French accents that you cannot avoid thinking of Loony Tunes' Pepe Le Pew. Such exaggerated accents are absurd for a brother and sister who would of course hear each other entirely without accent. A light touch to indicate character and native tongue would have been so welcome - a masterful example is David Pittu's narration of Fernando Aramburu's "Homeland", where the characters toggle between Spanish and Basque. Unfortunately, Ms. Campbell seems to treat this narration as an opportunity to demonstrate her prowess with various accents. This range would be amusing, even impressive, as an audition tape, but as the narration for a serious work of fiction, it is impossible to ignore the overkill, and has just about spoiled the book for me. I hope it does not for you, but I recommend listening to the sample before purchasing. I'm sorry to write such a negative review, but this could so easily have been avoided with a firmer hand from the production staff.
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13 people found this helpful
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- ann
- 05-26-24
Riveting , Elegiac, perfectly Evocative
Beautiful in every way. The characters are deeply portrayed . The historical moments intensely, gently vivid .
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ale P
- 10-29-24
Great performance, boring story
The plot is too ordinary and it jumps from character to character. Epic but ordinary family story. Deals with multigenerational events and characters across 4 continents: Algeria, France, Greece, South America and Australia
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- Weiyu Dang
- 11-25-24
good book awful reading
the god awful french accent by someone who is clearly not a french speaker was extremely distracting, annoying, and honestly comically insulting for how bad and cartoonish it was. that really detracted from a truly amazing novel. what person signed off on such a bad creative decision?
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