Tales of Two Planets

Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World

By: John Freeman - editor

Narrated by: full cast, Bahni Turpin, Roy Vongtama, John Freeman, Kim Mai Guest, Deepti Gupta, Dominic Hoffman, Sonya Macari, Sunil Malhotra, Jorjeana Marie

Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.

In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly: Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating further the already devastated. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world.

Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman engaged with some of today's most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress - from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok, Thailand. The response has been extraordinary. Margaret Atwood conjures with a dystopian future in a remarkable poem. Lauren Groff whisks us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; Yasmine El Rashidi to Egypt, while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria, and Anuradha Roy to the Himalayas in the wake of floods, dam building, and drought. This is a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage about the most important crisis of our times.

©2020 John Freeman (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

“The third in Freeman’s hat trick of anthologies that examines inequalities, Tales of Two Planets, may be the most important, for it addresses a colossal and irreversible threat: climate change [...This] collection is critical to understanding our planet beyond the scope of our own personal plights.” (Literary Hub) 

“[E]nvironmental and humanitarian crises in Egypt, Mexico, Hawaii, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and beyond are brought forward in masterful works elegiac, angry, and ironic in Freeman’s clarion global chorus.” (Booklist, starred review) 

"In this eye-opening anthology about climate change, an impressive cast of contributors including Edwidge Danticat, Mohammed Hanif, and Margaret Atwood reflect on how the grim horror of our current ecological reality is being felt around the world." (Elle)  

Pseudo Planets made into excellent Science Fiction

I plan to listen again, writing notes in the process and
then complete a review. Many thanks to John Freeman and cast. Bye for now Glen

A so needed book!

Okay, some stories are damn good, others are just meh. But the 4 stars are because overall, the collection is filled with a variety of tales and styles that make you see climate change through the lenses of people who live not only in first world countries, but in places that are being the first affected by this. Getting to know the day-to-day life and the environmental struggles in lands like Argentina, Burundi, Lebanon, Bangladesh and Libya (just to mention some) was both fascinating and terrifying. But I'm optimistic, and I do feel that with more literature like this, we can raise awareness to make a change.