-
Against the Loveless World
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Susan Abulhawa
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $22.67
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives
- A Novel
- By: Lola Shoneyin
- Narrated by: Lola Shoneyin
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Baba Segi, his collection of wives and gaggle of children are a symbol of prosperity, success, and a validation of his manhood. All is well in this patriarchal home, until Baba arrives with wife number four, a quiet, college-educated, young woman named Bolanle. Jealous and resentful of this interloper who is stealing their husband’s attention, Baba’s three wives, begin to plan her downfall.
-
-
Perfect narration
- By Aima G on 01-13-22
By: Lola Shoneyin
-
Build Your House Around My Body
- A Novel
- By: Violet Kupersmith
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed. 2011: A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace. The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts.
-
-
Epic, Horrifying & Mystical
- By Jonathan T. Jefferson on 07-20-21
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a 13-year-old houseboy working for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who's abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
-
-
Great book, but please have an actual African read it
- By Steven A. on 05-21-18
-
Mornings in Jenin
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amid the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home.
-
-
Excellent story
- By Naila Sherman on 11-04-16
By: Susan Abulhawa
-
The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
-
-
Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
-
A Girl Is a Body of Water
- By: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Narrated by: Tovah Ott
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
-
-
African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
-
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives
- A Novel
- By: Lola Shoneyin
- Narrated by: Lola Shoneyin
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Baba Segi, his collection of wives and gaggle of children are a symbol of prosperity, success, and a validation of his manhood. All is well in this patriarchal home, until Baba arrives with wife number four, a quiet, college-educated, young woman named Bolanle. Jealous and resentful of this interloper who is stealing their husband’s attention, Baba’s three wives, begin to plan her downfall.
-
-
Perfect narration
- By Aima G on 01-13-22
By: Lola Shoneyin
-
Build Your House Around My Body
- A Novel
- By: Violet Kupersmith
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed. 2011: A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace. The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts.
-
-
Epic, Horrifying & Mystical
- By Jonathan T. Jefferson on 07-20-21
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a 13-year-old houseboy working for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who's abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
-
-
Great book, but please have an actual African read it
- By Steven A. on 05-21-18
-
Mornings in Jenin
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amid the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home.
-
-
Excellent story
- By Naila Sherman on 11-04-16
By: Susan Abulhawa
-
The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
-
-
Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
-
A Girl Is a Body of Water
- By: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- Narrated by: Tovah Ott
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
International award-winning author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel is a sweeping and powerful portrait of a young girl and her family: who they are, what history has taken from them, and - most importantly - how they find their way back to each other. In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta - her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts - but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow.
-
-
African narrators for African novels!
- By Lynn on 04-24-21
-
Black Cake
- A Novel
- By: Charmaine Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman, Simone Mcintyre
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves.
-
-
Beautiful and Emotional Story
- By L. R. Smith on 02-04-22
-
The Beauty of Your Face
- A Novel
- By: Sahar Mustafah
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Michael Braun
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter - radicalized by the online alt-right - attacks the school.
-
-
A mostly satisfying tale of faith, tragedy and family
- By Seth Combs-Henry on 08-11-20
By: Sahar Mustafah
-
Song of a Captive Bird
- A Novel
- By: Jasmin Darznik
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel - gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. During the summer of 1950, Forugh's passion for poetry takes flight - and tradition seeks to clip her wings.
-
-
I really wanted to love this book, but...
- By Susan on 06-25-18
By: Jasmin Darznik
-
The Return of Faraz Ali
- A Novel
- By: Aamina Ahmad
- Narrated by: Homer Todiwala, Nina Wadia
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore’s walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission.
-
-
Narration
- By kamil on 05-04-22
By: Aamina Ahmad
-
The Arsonists' City
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Leila Buck
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nasr family is spread across the globe - Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut - a constant touchstone - and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house.
-
-
amazing
- By Kindle Customer on 05-07-22
By: Hala Alyan
-
Homeland Elegies
- A Novel
- By: Ayad Akhtar
- Narrated by: Ayad Akhtar
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
-
-
a mishmash of political theory and porn
- By LC on 02-06-21
By: Ayad Akhtar
-
Sparks Like Stars
- A Novel
- By: Nadia Hashimi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.
-
-
Amazing
- By Lisa on 03-26-21
By: Nadia Hashimi
-
If You Want to Make God Laugh
- A Novel
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Bianca Amato, Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words comes a rich, unforgettable story of three unique women in post-Apartheid South Africa who are brought together in their darkest time and discover the ways that love can transcend the strictest of boundaries.
-
-
Fantastic book
- By Grace Cathey on 01-11-21
By: Bianca Marais
-
China Room
- A Novel
- By: Sunjeev Sahota
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, Antonio Aakeel
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her now-sisters spend their days hard at work in the family’s “china room,” sequestered from contact with the men - except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and strong willed, Mehar tries to piece together what Mai doesn’t want her to know.
-
-
China Room Confusion
- By Jan on 09-13-21
By: Sunjeev Sahota
-
Kaikeyi
- A Novel
- By: Vaishnavi Patel
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on tales of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the devout and the wise. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to how great a marriage alliance she can secure. Desperate for some measure of independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone.
-
-
A feminist reimagining
- By CJDsCurrentRead on 05-22-22
By: Vaishnavi Patel
-
The Island of Missing Trees
- A Novel
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma, Amira Ghazalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish.
-
-
Beautifully woven tale
- By KR on 11-24-21
By: Elif Shafak
-
Transcendent Kingdom
- A Novel
- By: Yaa Gyasi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
-
-
Would have benefited from a different narrator
- By Richard Stewart on 09-11-20
By: Yaa Gyasi
Publisher's Summary
2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner
2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
“Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us.” (Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author)
In this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times), Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.
As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.
More from the same
What listeners say about Against the Loveless World
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sara
- 11-21-20
Don’t narrate your own books!
If you are not a known performer, please do not narrate your own books. This would have been so much better if she just left if to the professionals. I don’t listen to audiobooks to be read to. I want to be immersed.
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- carolyn privitera
- 12-15-21
I regret listening
I think this was a good book but the reader ( also the author) delivered the book in such a coma inducing monotone voice it was difficult to finish
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ali P.
- 11-24-21
Amazing book
I think it’s rare that I enjoy a book so much throughout, and it also has a great ending. This book was engaging and interesting, and the ending was what it needed, not cliched. I wish all of this author’s books were read by her, her voice was perfect, while some narrators can be grating or mispronounce things in Arabic.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Juju
- 07-02-21
Captivating!
I loved this story and the narration A LOT. Unlike other listeners, I enjoyed the narration by the author. I was immersed and appreciated her voice. I cried, laughed, felt angry, and sometimes happy and others, sad. I am Palestinian, so this story hits home and sits at the heart with me.
I hope you, my fellow listener, enjoy it as much as I did. May your world be enlightened with the hope that we Palestinians have in regaining our land.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sam
- 02-03-22
5 star rating
this was so awesome. I also read the book but the audio was topnotch
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jaimee Gillum Mayberry
- 05-01-21
Amazing
I fell in love with this authors writing. I loved how the author took the interviews she did with Middle Easterns and told their story so beautifully.
This historical fiction tells the story of resistance and the dangerous of trying to love and survive at the same time.
This novel follows a middle age Palestinian women, Nahr who reflects on her life while she’s kept in a cube as a policial prisoner after the US invasion in Iraq.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Phillip Straghalis
- 03-15-21
Be prepared to cry
Absolutely amazing. Like nothing I’ve ever read. Sweet and gut wrenching at the same time. If you want to have all sorts of emotions brought out from inside of you read this book or listen to this audio book.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lisa Tripp
- 03-08-21
Love and loss
I admit I cried with some passages. This novel is moving and true, a love story of man and woman refugee and home country. It also belies Israel’s contention of “a land without people for a people without land.”
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kristen Kao
- 12-05-20
A great and informative read
Abulhawa’s words paint a vivid imagery of life in Kuwait, Palestine, and Jordan for a Palestinian refugee woman which touches the soul. I’ve lived in or visited all three places and the way she weaves in aspects of not just the Arab culture that unified the three places but also the subtle differences that characterize each place is impressive. This is a really fulfilling read, as you learn while also being fully swept into the lives of the characters: their painstaking struggles, their humor, their strength.