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In the Shadow of the Banyan
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Greta Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
Told from the tender perspective of a young girl who comes of age amid the Cambodian killing fields, this searing first novel - based on the author’s personal story - has been hailed by Little Bee author Chris Cleave as “a masterpiece… utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful.”
For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.
Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.
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- By: Fiona Valpy
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Morocco, 1941. With France having fallen to Nazi occupation, twelve-year-old Josie has fled with her family to Casablanca, where they await safe passage to America. Life here is as intense as the sun, every sight, smell and sound overwhelming to the senses in a city filled with extraordinary characters. It’s a world away from the trouble back home—and Josie loves it. Seventy years later, another new arrival in the intoxicating port city, Zoe, is struggling—with her marriage, her baby daughter and her new life as an expat in an unfamiliar place.
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Sweet and profound
- By EYM on 11-15-21
By: Fiona Valpy
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Saigon
- An Epic Novel of Vietnam
- By: Anthony Grey
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 34 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Joseph Sherman first visits Saigon, the capital of French colonial Cochin-China, in 1925 on a hunting expedition with his father, a US senator. He is lured back again and again as a traveler, a soldier, and then as a reporter by his fascination for the exotic land and for Lan, a mandarin's daughter he cannot forget. Over five decades, Joseph's life becomes enmeshed with the political intrigues of two of Saigon's most influential families, the French colonist Devrauxs, and the native Trans - and inevitably with Vietnam's turbulent, war torn fate.
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A very interesting story
- By Amazon Customer on 06-27-21
By: Anthony Grey
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A Single Swallow
- By: Zhang Ling, Shelly Bryant - translator
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Adam Verner, Tanya Eby, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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On the day of the historic 1945 Jewel Voice Broadcast - in which Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces, bringing an end to World War II - three men, flush with jubilation, made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to the Chinese village of their younger days. Now, seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by American missionary Pastor Billy, brash gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu. All that’s missing is Ah Yan - also known as Swallow.
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A Must-Read
- By 20eagle16 on 05-13-21
By: Zhang Ling, and others
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The Name of the Rose
- By: Umberto Eco, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett, Neville Jason, Nicholas Rowe
- Length: 21 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. But his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths that take place in seven days and nights of apocalyptic terror. Brother William turns detective, and a uniquely deft one at that. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon-- all sharpened to a glistening edge by his wry humor and ferocious curiosity.
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The meaning of the mystery & mystery of meaning
- By Ryan on 02-14-14
By: Umberto Eco, and others
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When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
- A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
- By: Le Ly Hayslip, Jay Wurts
- Narrated by: Nancy Kwan
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Abridged
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This haunting memoir tells the brutal story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by violence, devastation, and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. The youngest in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was 12 years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was raped and "ruined" for marriage by Viet Cong soldiers, imprisoned and tortured by the South Vietnamese, and sentenced to death by the Viet Cong. Ultimately fleeing to the U.S. with her children, she finally found peace, and in 1986, she was reunited with her family in Vietnam. The story of her homecoming, interwoven with her memories of the war years, paints a vivid picture of a noble, optimistic woman and her native country.
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Difficult to listen to
- By heatherhg on 07-01-07
By: Le Ly Hayslip, and others
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A Long Way Gone
- Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
- By: Ishmael Beah
- Narrated by: Ishmael Beah
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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This is how wars are fought now by children, hopped up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived.
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Author's voice
- By B. Bunt on 11-01-13
By: Ishmael Beah
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The Stationery Shop
- A Novel
- By: Marjan Kamali
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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On the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but suddenly, violence erupts - a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she resigns herself to never seeing him again. Until, more than 60 years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century.
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Beautiful Story
- By Grace on 06-26-19
By: Marjan Kamali
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Pachinko
- By: Min Jin Lee
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant - and that her lover is married - she refuses to be bought.
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wonderful book
- By erin on 12-11-17
By: Min Jin Lee
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A Man of Two Faces
- A Memoir, a History, a Memorial
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
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If you don't like coddled, cry-babies, then avoid
- By Wayne A. Curto on 12-30-23
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A Long Petal of the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Nick Caistor, Amanda Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires.
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Impressive
- By Jean on 05-24-20
By: Isabel Allende, and others
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A Long Walk to Water
- By: Linda Sue Park
- Narrated by: David Baker, Cynthia Bishop
- Length: 2 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1985 southern Sudan is ravaged by war. Rebels and government forces battle for control, with ordinary people…people like the boy, Salva Dut…caught in the middle. When Salva's village is attacked, he must embark on a harrowing journey that will propel him through horror and heartbreak, across a harsh desert, and into a strange new life. Years later, in contemporary South Sudan, a girl named Nya must walk eight hours a day to fetch water. The walk is grueling, but there is unexpected hope.
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Clean Water Please
- By Sher from Provo on 06-02-16
By: Linda Sue Park
What listeners say about In the Shadow of the Banyan
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Resipsa44
- 08-17-12
Beautifully Written Heatbreaking Must Read!
In the Shadow of the Banyan, by Vaddey Ratner, is the "sleeper" novel-memoir of the summer. This semi-autobiographical novel about the life of one child and her family, in Cambodia, during the regime of Pol Pot, is a must read that the listener will never forget! It is an exquisitely written and powerful account of life and death in the killing fields of Cambodia and the power of a father's love through his self-sacrifice in order that his family, most importantly his children, could endure and survive, both physically and spiritually, through the four years of mass genocide and torture of the Cambodian people under the regime of Pol Pot.
Vaddey Ratner's own story, written as a novel, is both extremely powerful and gut wrenching. The story spans the four years of the Pol Pot regime. Written in the first person voice of the young Raami, and narrated over the four years of her life, begins when Raami is 5, living a life of privilege as a princess in Phnom Penh, and then quickly moves through the 4 years of extreme deprivation, starvation and death of the Cambodian people in the killing fields of Cambodia, under the Pol Pot regime.
The author's story is one that you will never forget. It is among one the most beautifully written contemporary novels that I have listened to on Audible in the over 10 years that I have been a member! It is a novel that must not be missed, both for the story and an understanding, in the lyrical and poetic writing of the author, of the suffering of the Cambodian people during the holocaust that they endured. Like her father, who was famous poet in Cambodia, the author, Vaddey Ratner, has a true gift for writing that lives, in her, through her father.
In the Shadow of the Banyan is written tribute to the 1 to 2 million Cambodians who died in the killing fields during the regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and to her father, who gave her, through his own sacrifice, the gift to endure the unendurable and to hope when there was none!
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6 people found this helpful
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- Laurie
- 09-29-12
Listening is perfect for this story
While reading the novel would be riveting, listening to it performed is a moving, exquisite experience. Hearing the Khmer words woven into the text makes the reader feel more involved in the country and culture. Unlike some of the other works about the toxic revolution in Cambodia, this book does not focus solely on the physical violence, blood, and gore until the end. Even then, it portrays anarchy and evil in a manner that allows the reader to stay with the story. Perhaps this makes the situation more disturbing, if that is possible.
What emerges is a the portrayal of a gracious and beautiful culture whose destruction is beyond comprehension. However, the grace and hope that is described in the book makes one admire and honor the survivors.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jodie
- 10-02-12
Great story
A lovely, beautifully written story. What a devastatingly tragic tale. I very much enjoyed this.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Robin Squier
- 03-15-15
Should get more than 5 stars
A beautiful book all should experience. The narrator was wonderful.
This book is one I shall return to many times.
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- Mel
- 08-23-12
A Terrible Tale from A Beautiful Storywriter
Different approach to telling the horror story of the Communist take over of Cambodia between 1975-'79, and the merciless slaughter of nearly 1/3 of the population (about 3 million) by the Khmer Rouge. The author relies on her own experiences as a child observing the atrocities, but chooses to use a fictional approach, telling the story through the eyes of a 7 yr. old female character named Raami, instead of exclusively using her personal memories to create the story. Ratner's style is poetic and artistic, and she tells much of the story through metaphors and similies--using the folklore, mythology, Buddhist poetry and fables, and the stories of her caretakers and poetic father to make any sense of what is happening, as observed by a child that has never known fear, pain, or monsters other than mythical dragons.
Ratner doesn't go into great detail compared with other books I've read about Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge, but the overall barbarism and senseless chaos recounted through the eyes of a child whose childhood has turned into a nightmare, ratchets the violence and fear up to another level that is heartbreaking and sickening. Raami's is a royal family, described as *Our family is like a bouquet, each stem and blossom perfectly arranged.* In the middle of a celebration, they are torn from the palatial home, separated, and thrown into the crowds of human despair by the brutal regime. The familial bonds, the respect for life, and the ability to pull strength and hope from nowhere add a sense of inspiration to what could have been a completely depressing novel.
There is a scene where a rice farmer is carving a small wooden calf, he says it is to hang around the neck of the mother cow that constantly cries *maaa maaa* mourning the death of her calf. The farmer tells Raami he is making the little wooden calf to hang around the neck of the cow so she "will have somewhere for her sorrow to go." The tremendous sorrow and loss is often expressed in beautiful passages like this that made the reading often meditative. Even with such meaningful writing and disturbing subject, there is a sense of recollection in the telling, an overriding distance that seems sometimes removed from emotion, and an insight and style that seems years beyond a 7 year olds, that combined made it difficult for me to genuinely connect with the storyteller, Raami. It didn't detract from the story, just my depth of involvement with the emotional side of Raami's experience--but no regrets. The narration fits the story and the character of Raami well. A timeless story that should be told and remembered.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Ron
- 08-22-12
Unfathomable depths of sadness
Beautiful and horrific all at once and combined. The almost unimaginable horrors this small child had to live through, that most humans could not comprehend, are told in exquisite and often poetic detail. This is a story of a dismantling of a country and a society, and the family that she loses can almost be seen as a metaphor for the entire four years of the reign of terror the Khmer Rouge.
Often times disturbing, this might not be everyone. But it is like a history lesson, and a lesson and example as to the inhumanity that is still contained within humanity.
The narration is very good, but just a little lacking, considering the drama there was to work with in the story. But I enjoyed it, and it has taken a few days of reflection before I could attempt this review, for the simple fact that the story is haunting me and will for a while.
Thank you Vaddey Rutner for being so brave to retell this story. The strength you showed just surviving those horrors lives on. You are a special human being.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Deborah
- 08-23-12
A story of family love and shocking circumstances
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
It is an important story, but lessened by the choice of a western sounding voice to tell the story.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Greta Lee?
The author, herself, or someone sounding like the author should have put the story into the minds of the listener.
Did In the Shadow of the Banyan inspire you to do anything?
The re-telling of this story made me thank the people of the churches in the Boston area who brought Cambodian refugees to the USA in the 1980's from refugee camps in Thailand. I met the refugees there, I- a new teacher of English as a second language, and they- the hurt and hopeful immigrants. They told me these stories first-hand. They changed my life and changed my opinion my own countrymen. God bless them all.
Any additional comments?
The escape attempts from the work camps and the rules against having unauthorized food (found eggs, etc.) are other stories of bravery that should be told. Perhaps other Cambodians would please fill in the blanks from your experience or from the experiences of your parents.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kadgee
- 09-24-12
Life when one accepts
Informative-scary-thought provoking - seen through the eyes of a child. Feel it's important to understand the past of each country as the world grows smaller.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Judith
- 06-11-13
I never new..
This was a hard story to listen to. I do not know history very well and this is a story of the people of Cambodia and what they endured under Kymur Rouge. It is important to know these events. The narrator has you believing s he is the young girl, the prose is poetic at times, almost lyrical, and has you moving through a range of emotions as we care for the characters. It is stunning in all ways.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Chris Dorosky
- 10-07-12
Well told. Very wrenching
I got a bit put off when I thought it was a novel and not a true story, but this is a technicality. Author took a few liberties with dates, places, etc... but it is her story. It was very well done. Riches->rags->climb back up again.
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1 person found this helpful