-
Solacers
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 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
Buy for $15.47
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 Little Liar
- A Novel
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with a powerful novel of hope and forgiveness that moves from a coastal Greek city during WWII to America in the golden age of Hollywood, as the intertwined lives of three young survivors are forever changed by the perils of deception and the grace of redemption.
-
-
Thank you for bringing out this story. I am first generation of holocaust survivors and never knew about Greece.
- By Red on 11-18-23
By: Mitch Albom
-
My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
-
-
Great story well told
- By B. Cohen on 11-23-23
By: Ariel Sabar
-
Nothing Bad Between Us
- A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness
- By: Marlena Fiol PhD
- Narrated by: Pamela Almand
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Discover a story of healing and personal transformation. Marlena’s childhood was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor for people with leprosy and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed to both be accepted in Paraguay and escape to somewhere new. In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena’s journey as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included.
-
-
Peek into Mennonite culture and discipline
- By ListenClose on 01-02-21
By: Marlena Fiol PhD
-
The Mountains Sing
- By: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North.
-
-
Incredible first English language novel
- By Gregory Barbee on 03-23-20
-
The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
- Stories
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments - caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition, and fresh experience. A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter".
-
-
Catalyst for introspection on life.
- By amanda shelton on 11-14-21
-
My Friend Anne Frank
- The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds
- By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, Dina Kraft
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever.
-
-
the missing piece to Anne’s story and the complete picture of Hannah’s
- By Wilson on 07-13-23
By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, and others
-
The Little Liar
- A Novel
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with a powerful novel of hope and forgiveness that moves from a coastal Greek city during WWII to America in the golden age of Hollywood, as the intertwined lives of three young survivors are forever changed by the perils of deception and the grace of redemption.
-
-
Thank you for bringing out this story. I am first generation of holocaust survivors and never knew about Greece.
- By Red on 11-18-23
By: Mitch Albom
-
My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
-
-
Great story well told
- By B. Cohen on 11-23-23
By: Ariel Sabar
-
Nothing Bad Between Us
- A Mennonite Missionary’s Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness
- By: Marlena Fiol PhD
- Narrated by: Pamela Almand
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Discover a story of healing and personal transformation. Marlena’s childhood was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor for people with leprosy and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed to both be accepted in Paraguay and escape to somewhere new. In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena’s journey as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included.
-
-
Peek into Mennonite culture and discipline
- By ListenClose on 01-02-21
By: Marlena Fiol PhD
-
The Mountains Sing
- By: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
- Narrated by: Quyen Ngo
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North.
-
-
Incredible first English language novel
- By Gregory Barbee on 03-23-20
-
The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
- Stories
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments - caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition, and fresh experience. A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter".
-
-
Catalyst for introspection on life.
- By amanda shelton on 11-14-21
-
My Friend Anne Frank
- The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds
- By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, Dina Kraft
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever.
-
-
the missing piece to Anne’s story and the complete picture of Hannah’s
- By Wilson on 07-13-23
By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, and others
-
The Road from Raqqa
- A Story of Brotherhood, Borders, and Belonging
- By: Jordan Ritter Conn
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the city that would later became the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre—an atrocity by the Assad regime. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the US to study law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in love with a Southern belle. Bashar, meanwhile, stayed in Syria and embarked on a brilliant legal career under the same corrupt Assad government that Riyad despised.
-
-
Gripping & Meaningful
- By Amazon Customer on 09-04-20
-
Sabina
- In the Eye of the Storm
- By: Bella Kuligowska Zucker
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the memoir written by Bella Kuligowska Zucker, the only person in her family to survive the Holocaust. In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. After loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. After finding the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany.
-
-
Excellent
- By Marjorie Lowry on 10-10-23
-
The Kinship of Secrets
- By: Eugenia Kim
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1948, Najin and Calvin Cho, with their young daughter Miran, travel from South Korea to the United States in search of new opportunities. Wary of the challenges they know will face them, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their other daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her. But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn't remember.
-
-
Amazing story
- By Farrah Brown on 06-28-19
By: Eugenia Kim
-
The Postcard
- By: Anne Berest, Tina Kover - translator
- Narrated by: Barrie Kealoha
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.
-
-
The author’s words deserve a better narrator
- By TK on 05-22-23
By: Anne Berest, and others
-
Children of the Stars
- By: Mario Escobar
- Narrated by: Zach Hoffman
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
August 1942. Jacob and Moses Stein, two young Jewish brothers, are staying with their aunt in Paris amid the Nazi occupation. The boys’ parents, well-known German playwrights, have left the brothers in their aunt’s care until they can find safe harbor for their family. But before the Steins can reunite, a great and terrifying roundup occurs. The French gendarmes, under Nazi order, arrest the boys and take them to the Vélodrome d’Hiver - a massive, bleak structure in Paris where thousands of France’s Jews are being forcibly detained.
-
-
Innocence can only be lost once
- By Kenny Russell on 09-01-21
By: Mario Escobar
-
Somewhere in the Unknown World
- A Collective Refugee Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang, Kurt Kwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Somewhere in the Unknown World is a themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.
-
-
Understanding refugees
- By Jeannie on 02-24-24
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
The Lost Daughter
- A Novel
- By: Gill Paul
- Narrated by: Helen Duff
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1918: Pretty, vivacious Grand Duchess Maria Romanov, the 19-year-old daughter of the fallen Tsar Nicholas II, lives with her family in suffocating isolation, a far cry from their once-glittering royal household. Her days are a combination of endless boredom and paralyzing fear; her only respite are clandestine flirtations with a few of the guards imprisoning the family - never realizing her innocent actions could mean the difference between life and death.
-
-
Slow....Very Slow....
- By D. Fields on 04-10-20
By: Gill Paul
-
Exile Music
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Steil
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young girl growing up in Vienna in the 1930s, Orly has an idyllic childhood filled with music. Her father plays the viola in the Philharmonic, her mother is a well-regarded opera singer, her beloved and charismatic older brother holds the neighborhood in his thrall, and most of her eccentric and wonderful extended family live nearby. Only vaguely aware of Hitler's rise or how her Jewish heritage will define her family's identity, Orly spends her days immersed in play with her best friend and upstairs neighbor, Anneliese.
-
-
Superb!
- By Judi Forman on 09-14-20
By: Jennifer Steil
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
The Library of Legends
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, 19-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than 100 students, faculty, and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.
-
-
Wonderful and Umique!
- By D. Fields on 02-18-22
By: Janie Chang
-
The Wind Knows My Name
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Frances Riddle - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Maria Liatis
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.
-
-
Reminiscences of House of the Spirits; too short, underdeveloped
- By J. Mirabal on 06-08-23
By: Isabel Allende, and others
Publisher's summary
Solacers tells the touching story of a boy's search for family life and safety following the divorce of his parents in Iran during the 1960s. The first child of a heartless father and a discarded mother is left to fend for himself on the streets of Mashhad, seeking food and shelter wherever he can. His lonely early years are an unbelievable tale of cruelty and betrayal on the part of nearly everyone who might be expected to help, save for one aunt who does her best to keep him from starving.
But living a harsh and solitary existence has one advantage for this little boy: other than forcing him to be self-reliant, no one attempts to indoctrinate him on rural Iranian society's archaic cultural values and religious beliefs. And so he never accepts his wretched state as fate, choosing instead to dream big dreams about getting an education, having his own family, and starting a new life - possibly in the faraway land called America.
He makes a plan and by the age of 17 he boards a plane to the land of possibilities, where his dreams eventually also take flight.
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
-
-
Great story well told
- By B. Cohen on 11-23-23
By: Ariel Sabar
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
The Library of Legends
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, 19-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than 100 students, faculty, and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.
-
-
Wonderful and Umique!
- By D. Fields on 02-18-22
By: Janie Chang
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
- My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
- By: Lucette Lagnado
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado recreates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.
-
-
A Touching Memoir of a Jewish Family in Egypt
- By Brustar on 06-10-20
By: Lucette Lagnado
-
My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
-
-
Great story well told
- By B. Cohen on 11-23-23
By: Ariel Sabar
-
The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
-
-
Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
The Library of Legends
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, 19-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than 100 students, faculty, and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.
-
-
Wonderful and Umique!
- By D. Fields on 02-18-22
By: Janie Chang
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
- My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
- By: Lucette Lagnado
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado recreates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.
-
-
A Touching Memoir of a Jewish Family in Egypt
- By Brustar on 06-10-20
By: Lucette Lagnado
-
After the Last Border
- Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America
- By: Jessica Goudeau
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The welcoming and acceptance of immigrants and refugees have been central to America's identity for centuries - yet America has periodically turned its back in times of the greatest humanitarian need. After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women as they struggle for the 21st-century American dream, having won the "golden ticket" to settle as refugees in Austin, Texas.
-
-
Great Content. Odd Structure.
- By Susan Stillings on 02-10-21
By: Jessica Goudeau
-
My Friend Anne Frank
- The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds
- By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, Dina Kraft
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever.
-
-
the missing piece to Anne’s story and the complete picture of Hannah’s
- By Wilson on 07-13-23
By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, and others
-
Virgins of Paradise
- By: Barbara Wood
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jasmine and Camelia Rasheed grow to womanhood under the watchful eye of their grandmother inside the walls surrounding a beautiful house on Virgins of Paradise Street in exotic Cairo. They come of age in society in which the subjugation of women is assumed - they must wear veils, are forbidden to leave the house, have no independent rights, and are circumcised to ensure purity and obedience.
-
-
eye opening
- By C Ohana on 11-13-08
By: Barbara Wood
-
America Is in the Heart
- By: Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo - foreword, E. San Juan Jr. - introduction, and others
- Narrated by: Ramon de Ocampo
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.
-
-
Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
-
Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
-
-
Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
-
Young Heroes of the Soviet Union
- A Memoir and a Reckoning
- By: Alex Halberstadt
- Narrated by: Alex Halberstadt
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Can trauma be inherited? It is this question that sets Alex Halberstadt off on a quest to name and acknowledge a legacy of family trauma, and to end a century-old cycle of estrangement. As Halberstadt revisits the sites of his family’s formative traumas, he uncovers a multigenerational transmission of fear, suspicion, melancholy, and rage. And he comes to realize something more: Nations, like people, possess formative traumas that penetrate into the most private recesses of their citizens’ lives.
-
-
some depth and some historical narration
- By turgan@monomood.com on 09-21-21
By: Alex Halberstadt
-
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
-
-
Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
-
What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
-
-
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22
-
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 Parted Earth
- By: Anjali Enjeti
- Narrated by: Deepti Gupta
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent on the lives of three generations.
-
-
Riveting
- By MSE on 05-14-21
By: Anjali Enjeti
-
Remembering Shanghai
- A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
- By: Isabel Sun Chao, Claire Chao
- Narrated by: Rachel Yong, Claire Chao, Isabel Sun Chao
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations, from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.
-
-
touching stories of resilience and family
- By Rodger on 01-17-21
By: Isabel Sun Chao, and others
-
The Shadow Lines
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Raj Varma
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Ghosh’s radiant second novel follows two families - one English, one Bengali - as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian-born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.
-
-
Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
What listeners say about Solacers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- nick
- 10-06-20
Interesting.
Very sad in the beginning but offer some life lessons. Being a immigrant and poor I truly understand some of what he went thru
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- T. Dugan
- 07-20-17
Very nice but sad story
It was a good glimpse of pre revolutionary Iran and the tribulations of one poor child.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Flamenco Romántico
- 06-02-20
A moving book
I loved most of the book but was disappointed in the end when the mutual dream sequence that sounded so important was never finished and I felt hanging. I know it was a memoir so he couldn’t change the end, but he could’ve addressed that. I’m trying to critique it without giving away the story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- William
- 09-08-23
Not just a memoir!
I’m not sure I would have bought this myself but it was offered free for a limited time and was rated highly so I picked it up. I’m glad I did, otherwise I would have missed one of the best books I’ve read in a while. Arion Golmakani has written a memoir but it is not at all a typical memoir.
Golmakani, called Alireza as a child, was born in Iran but his father divorced his mother when Alireza was very young and refused to take any responsibility for him, his younger sister, or his mother. She struggled to support them at even a minimum level with whatever work she could get and by selling some jewelry she had managed to hide when her husband left and her family could offer little help either. Life seemed to get better when another man married her but he was an uneducated tailor and when they began to have children of their own, he pushed her to send Alireza and his sister to their father and demand that he support them which his heartless father refused. Instead, he beat the mother and repeated attempts only lead to further threats and beatings and the disappearance of his sister. At age 5, Alireza was was rotating among various foster homes where his father would pay for one month, promising to return with following months but would not do so, leaving Alireza to be kicked out. Eventually his mother and step-father move away to Tehran, his father becomes even more cruel despite becoming more and more wealthy, and Alireza is left to fend for himself on the street scavenging for food and shelter where he can with only an aunt who does her best to keep from starving but she also with very limited means.
There were occasional glimmers of hope that often didn’t last very long but when Alireza is seven, he is taken to another home. Again his father fails to continue to make the support payments but Kia, a fifteen-year-old boy and the only son, treats Alireza as a younger brother and insists that he must be enrolled in school. Even when her son leaves to join the military, Kia’s mother tries to help as she can even as her own situation becomes severely strained. Although he continues to live on the streets and occasionally with various distant relatives for a few nights, but even then, only for shelter not for food. He mostly has to scavenge for food thrown away by others. Still, Alireza manages to stay in school and even graduate from high school. But his life, essentially without a home and without family has given him few emotional ties to Iran though he knows that leaving would be impossible for someone without money or connections. Even finding a job is very difficult without connections but he hears that, with the close ties between Iran and the United States (before the Islamic Revolution), the military sends their brightest to the US for training. He decides to join the Iranian Navy, which eventually brings him to the United States where he was in training when the Shah was overthrown, leaving him unable to return.
Why read a book that is just about such a struggle for existence in a foreign country? One reason is that, as you read through this story starting from the late 1950s through the mid 1970s, you get a very different picture of the Iranian people than most people think of today. There was systemic corruption that left most people struggling or with just enough to survive while a few lived lavishly. But even for the average person, there was a close connection with the West and with the US. Tehran was called the Paris of the Middle East and was a fashion center. Alireza was a fan of the Beatles in high school as were most of his classmates. Another reason is that it is a fascinating story of survival and we all love stories where we are able to cheer on an underdog and watch them continue to survive against all odds.
However, that’s not why I recommend this book. Golmakani writes in a very friendly and natural style, more like sitting on the sofa and relating his story to you. It is written from the memory of a child so you won’t find any discussions of history or politics and even very little discussion of religion except at the points where it affected him. And yet the story is so horrendous that it is easy to keep thinking, “how could anyone do this to a child?” Some of the people he describes can only be described as utterly cruel. Others were possibly just insensitive. But it is also probably difficult for us to understand what it is like to truly not have enough even for yourself, to want to help someone and yet to have nothing to share without endangering the lives of your own. And that would make any story like this extremely depressing. And yet, I didn’t find it to be so. It was heavy and it was sad. I felt anger at times. I felt disbelief. But there was always something uplifting as well. You will notice the title of the book, “Solacers,” and he uses that word throughout for those who helped him or encouraged him in little ways. What comes through is how he focuses on those who helped far more than he focuses on those who caused him such grief, including his father. I wanted to scream at his father but he simply related events without judgment or condemnation. He just moves on. His focus is on those who showed him solace, or I would probably say, love.
This is the kind of book that might make you cry, but if it does, it won’t be because of his sad life. It will be because of his gracious recounting of his story and how clearly he has been able to move on without bitterness. It will be because you see a heart that is grateful for things that we might have thought was so little that they didn’t even deserve the term “acts of kindness.” It will because you realize how ungrateful that we are for the abundance that we have and hoard. He has not written the story of Arion Golmakani, Alireza. He has written the story of the Solacers, the many people who gave even the smallest things to help him survive.
I wish everyone would read this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- shireen jahedkar
- 08-23-19
One of my new favorites
Solacers has easily become one of my new favorite stories. My father also came to the US as part of the IIN pre-revolution, and hearing these stories was like listening to the stories my father is no longer around to tell. I appreciated the bits of Farsi the author included (bastani was one of my first Farsi words!) and the detailed descriptions of people, places and food. The author's insight into the culture and balancing the feeling of loving Iran but also having the desire to go to the US helped round out the story nicely. Possibly my only quam was that I felt as if the narrator pronounced some of the Farsi and Persian names differently than I expected. However, I do appreciate that the narrator appears to have Middle Eastern roots.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Naomi c
- 05-05-18
moving and humbling
I loved every minute of this heart wrenching story. It made me feel, cry, laugh, and appreciate my life. A must read for all.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Winston FF
- 06-23-22
I couldn’t put this book down!!
Having left Iran at a young age, I always long to know more about my birthplace.
I had to shed a few tears in this book it was beautiful and revealing about a society a little
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Murad Asil
- 11-18-20
over exaggerated
the story is over exaggerated, the poor soul, a third world orphan with a terrible life, result of the society as a whole, seeks refuge in shining America. the writer's own symbolic escape from humiliated himself.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!