-
The Surrendered
- Narrated by: James Yaegashi
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $25.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Gesture Life
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Greg Watanabe
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Gesture Life is the story of an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II.
-
-
Superb
- By BooksRLife on 11-19-20
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
The Island of Sea Women
- A Novel
- By: Lisa See
- Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous, physical work, and the men take care of the children.
-
-
Overly dramatic read
- By mary krause on 03-28-19
By: Lisa See
-
Pachinko
- By: Min Jin Lee
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
wonderful book
- By erin on 12-11-17
By: Min Jin Lee
-
On Such a Full Sea
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: B. D. Wong
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee’s elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way listeners think about the world they live in. In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class.
-
-
Literary dystopian fiction
- By David on 03-18-17
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
In the Distance
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
-
-
Hard to characterize
- By Susan on 11-17-18
By: Hernan Diaz
-
A Gesture Life
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Greg Watanabe
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Gesture Life is the story of an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II.
-
-
Superb
- By BooksRLife on 11-19-20
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
The Island of Sea Women
- A Novel
- By: Lisa See
- Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous, physical work, and the men take care of the children.
-
-
Overly dramatic read
- By mary krause on 03-28-19
By: Lisa See
-
Pachinko
- By: Min Jin Lee
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
wonderful book
- By erin on 12-11-17
By: Min Jin Lee
-
On Such a Full Sea
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: B. D. Wong
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee’s elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way listeners think about the world they live in. In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class.
-
-
Literary dystopian fiction
- By David on 03-18-17
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
In the Distance
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
-
-
Hard to characterize
- By Susan on 11-17-18
By: Hernan Diaz
-
Happiness Falls (Good Morning America Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Angie Kim
- Narrated by: Shannon Tyo, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Thomas Pruyn, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.
-
-
A mixed review, but recommend
- By Andrea B. on 09-07-23
By: Angie Kim
-
The Marriage Portrait
- A Novel
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt, Maggie O'Farrell
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding, Lucrezia is thrust into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must make her way in a court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed.
-
-
If You Love Alternate Histories, Get This
- By Jim on 09-26-22
By: Maggie O'Farrell
-
The Orphan Master's Son
- A Novel
- By: Adam Johnson
- Narrated by: Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, James Kyson Lee, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother - a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang - and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.
-
-
The most compelling listen I've ever owned
- By Lisa on 01-27-12
By: Adam Johnson
-
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
-
-
A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
And the Mountains Echoed
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini, Navid Negahban, Shohreh Aghdashloo
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Khaled Hosseini, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations.
-
-
Does the End Justify the Means
- By FanB14 on 05-24-13
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
The Nightingale
- By: Kristin Hannah
- Narrated by: Polly Stone
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
-
-
Heroic & Harrowing Work Of Fiction
- By Sara on 08-21-15
By: Kristin Hannah
-
The Netanyahus
- An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
- By: Joshua Cohen
- Narrated by: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.
-
-
Phillip Roth would certainly listen!
- By Martin on 01-17-22
By: Joshua Cohen
-
How Beautiful We Were
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards, Dion Graham, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.
-
-
As relevant as it is heart-wrenching
- By Anonymous User on 10-18-21
By: Imbolo Mbue
-
We Were the Lucky Ones
- By: Georgia Hunter
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati, Robert Fass
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times best-seller with more than one million copies sold worldwide. Inspired by the incredible true story of one Jewish family separated at the start of World War II, determined to survive - and to reunite - We Were the Lucky Ones is a tribute to the triumph of hope and love against all odds. It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer.
-
-
Love it but...
- By Roz on 07-19-17
By: Georgia Hunter
-
The Moor's Account
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this stunning work of historical fiction, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America--a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record. In 1527 the conquistador Pnfilo de Narvez sailed from the port of Sanlcar de Barrameda with a crew of 600 men and nearly a hundred horses. His goal was to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Spanish crown and, in the process, become as wealthy and famous as Hernn Corts.
-
-
Terrific read evoking 16th century New World life
- By William on 11-04-15
By: Laila Lalami
-
A Thousand Splendid Suns
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Atossa Leoni
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them, in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul, they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.
-
-
Completely brilliant
- By Suze Weinberg on 06-01-07
By: Khaled Hosseini
-
Cutting for Stone
- A Novel
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 23 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
-
-
An Epic Medical Novel
- By Audiophile on 07-11-09
By: Abraham Verghese
Publisher's summary
At the end of the Korean War, the lives of orphan June Han and American soldier Hector Brennan collide. Thirty years later, they meet again and are forced to come to terms with the secrets of their devastating past.
Critic reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about The Surrendered
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- towergrl
- 08-23-18
A sorrowful haunt, gorgeous storytelling!
What a story! The author pulls you in immediately, you don’t have have to work at it, slaving away to find the meat. It hits you right in the face and then binds you up in sorrow and the human fragility. A beautiful story, one that needed to be told. One of my most high recommends!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Zoe Merewether
- 08-09-12
Engrossing Portrayal of the Effect of War
This book and the narrator are terrific despite the brutality of the content. Although I am familiar with the history of the conflicts between Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese in the 20th century and America's role in this complex part of the world, this fictional story vividly portrays the effect of war on civilians. I don't think that the average American reader has any idea how World War II and the Korean War affected people in those countries and how these effects continue to shape immigrants 50 years later. Chang- Rae Lee's prose is stunning, particularly in an audio book format. This is one of my favorites from Audible
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Tony
- 05-14-11
YAWN!
Try as I may, in the end I did not care about the characters. I did get to the end but asked myself why??? Perhaps I missed the point. My wife asked if she should read The Surrendered.... ahhh...NO.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- Emily
- 05-13-10
this bibliophile could not finish this book
I had such high hopes for this book. I love reading historical fiction, especially works about colonialism and Asia, so I jumped at the chance to listen a novel about the Korean War. But I became frustrated by the tired tropes of the novel, the melodramatic tone of the narrator, and the unsympathetic characters and unrealistic plot. I was about two hours from the end of the book, when the tension should have been building to a climax, when I made the decision to stop listening. I rarely abandon books, especially when I'm so far from the end, but I had stopped caring about what happened to the characters and it was a painful listen. The narrator sounded like he was narrating crime fiction, which didn't help my opinion of the book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
12 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stephen T. Coomes
- 04-29-11
Save yourself the trouble, a total disappointment
This makes me sad to write since I've met the author, Chang-rae Lee, a man who couldn't have been more kind and charming or humble. But his book, The Surrendered, is simply awful. Firstly, the book desperately needs a team of editors to steer Lee back to its myriad flaws needing repair. It's missing many details essential to the story, pieces which are astonishingly left out. I've never listened to or read a book in which so many words are just made up, nouns and verbs turned into adjectives and adverbs seemingly out of convenience to the author. And the reuse of the same words over and over--he must have used "welling" in 10 different ways 30 different times.
The story line is unbelievable, even for historical, wartime fiction, and I'm not talking about the brutality of the combatants. There's not a single happy character in the lot, and the one who comes closest is a drug addict. As one other reviewer put it, Lee's use of tropes is just nauseating. I can't tell if he's trying too hard to impress readers or himself by twisting every description into something symbolic and deep, or whether he just can't make himself write cleanly and concisely.
The narrator needs to find a new line of work. He was just not good in any way, shape or form. I know that sounds mean, but it's the truth, I'm sorry to say.
To think that this book is up for a Pulitzer Prize is purely astonishing. It's such a bad nomination that it makes me think so much less of the Pulitzer Prize itself--a marker by which I've often bought books. Just as shocking is the fact that Lee is a professor of literature at Princeton! Who knows? Maybe he teaches better than he writes.
Unlike the other reviewer who simply gave up on the book, I finished it out of respect to Lee and the fact that I paid for it. Frankly I wish I'd bailed out, because the ending was not even close to being worth it. Sorry, Chang-Rae, you're a very nice man, but I can't imagine letting anyone else read this book without fair warning
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Margaret
- 09-08-19
Really. Bad. Book.
Wooden characters, badly written, excruciating narrator - this book has it all. I was curious about this writer and gave it a listen, but it's the last novel I'll read by him. The characters aren't developed in an intelligent way; they're simply your basic cast of damaged humans and that's that. There's the odd accident and death, and the author doesn't take the time or ink to delve into the grief of his characters. Really? Hector wasn't just a little sad when his lover died? He just hopped on a plane to Italy and got over it? The dialogue between characters is so painfully written that I almost left the novel several times. If I hadn't paid for the book, I wouldn't have bothered to finish it. It's the first time in my life that I wished I'd ordered a Danielle Steel novel instead.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!