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- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
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Editorial Reviews
Publisher's summary
Set in Liberia and the United States from 1975 through 1991, The Darling is a political/historical thriller, reminiscent of Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, that explodes the genre, raising serious philosophical questions about terrorism, political violence, and the clash of races and cultures.
Critic reviews
- Audie Award Winner, Fiction (Unabridged), 2005
"A rich and complex look at the searing connections between the personal and the political, this is one of Banks's most powerful novels yet." (Publishers Weekly)
"Banks brings the full weight of his storytelling genius and psychological perceptiveness to a novel as compulsively readable as it is eviscerating in its dramatization of cultural divides, political mayhem, psychotic violence, and profound alienation." (Booklist)
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What listeners say about The Darling
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Ellen H. Anderson
- 02-05-05
Complex and compelling
I have been listening to Audiobooks for years and this has been one of my favorite books. First of all, even though I know better, I could not believe that the author was not a woman. The constant shifting of focus from social behavior - both human and animal - to the individual conscience, was stunning. This book will appeal to readers who love politics, stories about different cultures, mysteries and wonderful character development. I am going to buy the book and read it again, something I seldom do. This book is really a masterpiece.
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21 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Lee
- 01-05-05
extraordinary and beautiful
Russell Banks is one of our greatest novelists in the English Language. His body of work shows an artistry with the language that few others meet.
This novel ranks with Cloudsplitter. Banks' characters are flawed people, but the reader is enriched and enlighted by listening or reading them come to terms with their lives.
In Darling Banks explores what it means to be moral by exploring complicated lives led fully. He brings a deep mediation on lyalty, empathy, language, social change, and loveas his main character explores her life.
The narration is nearly perfect. This is an excedllent audio experience.
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19 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Eve Breckenridge
- 12-30-04
well crafted book
I loved his writing style as well as leaning a lot about Africa. surprises abound. I felt a tenderness toward characters that in real life I might not take the time to know. Master storyteller.
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15 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Mr. Gone
- 09-12-05
Smart, rich, and beautifully read
This is one of the finest audio titles that I have had the pleasure to hear in more than a decade of listening. I had not been familiar with Russell Banks beyond having heard the name, but I had Liberian friends who lived through the disastrous past two decades. The Darling's premise is not very promising: the first person telling by radicalized daughter of privilege (sorry for all the "pr's"...) of the horror of the Liberian collapse. As it turns out, Russell Banks paints a complex portrait of a woman with all her contradictory impulses who penetrates into the "heart of darkness." I found it delicate, moving, even funny. The reading is superb, not intrusive but colorful and varied. I can't recommend this highly enough.
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- D. Littman
- 11-27-05
wonderfully read, wonderfully written
This book by Russell Banks is a powerful volume, with particular resonance for, I believe, members of the baby-boomer generation, with [formerly] radical pretensions & an interest in third world developments. I found a remarkable number of parallels with episodes in my own life (of long ago, frankly) ... college, belief systems, foreign travel, interests.
In narrow terms, this is the story of a one-time member of the SDS Weather Underground, who ends up escaping from the US to Africa, marries into the Liberian autocracy, lives through the bloody civil war of the late-1980s & 1990s. It is reminiscent of Graham Greene (e.g., the Comedians), but more powerful & more intimate. Hanna is not an alienated foreign observer of the same ilk as most of Greene's protagonists. It is reminiscent of Naipaul, but told from an American's perspective rather than a british-third-world perspective.
This is extremely well narrated and very difficult to put down. Recommended highly.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Joshua
- 09-20-05
Superb narration for a terrific story
This is one of the best, if not the best, title I have listened to on Audible. The voice of the central character seemed very authentic to me, as she described both the external conflicts going on in Liberia and the heartrending internal conflicts and contradictions going on inside of her. In addition, Mary Beth Hurt does an amazing job with the narration!
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Angela
- 09-01-05
Deeply depressing
I slogged through this book, determined to see it through to the end, but it was a struggle all the way. I never felt any affinity with any of the characters and, indeed, was ready to have the worst happen to all of them , just to get the story over with. The author never gets us to identify with the heroine at all: she is just a spoiled, rich brat from a well to do family who rebels against her WASP-ish upbringing by heading on a self-destructive path to Africa. Unless you are a Patty Hearst wanna-be, and long for the days when "social activism" meant blowing up Federal buildings, I suggest you avoid this book
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Phil Johnson
- 02-26-08
Unexpectedly great book
I downloaded this expecting another book. One of the best books I have experienced on audio. The reader does an excellent job, the story is fascinating, the writing is some of the best I have read recently.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kim H
- 06-29-08
Brilliant!
Banks' hugely ambitious, yet emotionally introspective novel is brilliantly complemented by Hurt's compelling reading. One of the finest audiobooks I have heard!
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Bill
- 05-08-05
really, very good
Russell Banks is an excellent writer and this book is an excellent listen. It is very well read and the sound/engineering is very good. Banks' characters are drawn with unromatic honesty, sometimes a bit harshly, but that is true to the perceptions of the narrator. This would probably be a good book club selection, lot of fodder for chatter. No one in this book makes a truly human connection with anyone else and in some way that undercuts the horror of the completely benighted mayhem that overtakes them. But the context is good and the pacing in subtle but very effective, you will be moved when he wants you to feel something. Whereas it is a totally engrossing book, I am still stuck on the fact that Hannah never did really want to find her sons.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story

- Denise O'Connor
- 01-19-23
Fantastic story unputdownable
A highly intelligent, politically savvy, wonderfully written story about an American woman’s search for justice which takes her on a journey to west Africa and back. A riveting interrogation of what it means to be a woman, to be human and how we relate to our nearest kin, the chimpanzee. I salute Russell Banks and hats off to Mary Beth Hurt for her narration. Read it!!
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Story
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.
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Best listen in years
- By odin on 04-08-17
By: Omar El Akkad
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
- A Memoir of Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.
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Worth the listen.
- By SEE on 09-06-21
By: Peter Godwin
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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Green City in the Sun
- By: Barbara Wood
- Narrated by: Edie Tusor
- Length: 27 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1917 Dr. Grace Treverton arrives in Kenya determined to bring modern medicine to the African natives. Her brother, Sir Valentine Treverton, has his own dream for the British protectorate: to establish an agricultural empire to rival any in England. The aspirations of the wealthy Trevertons collide with those of the Mathenge tribe, an African family that has lived on the land for years. Grace soon finds a deadly rival in Mama Wachera, an African medicine woman who fights to maintain native traditions against the encroaching whites.
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Sadly we haven’t change
- By hernando on 09-03-22
By: Barbara Wood
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American War
- A Novel
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.
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Best listen in years
- By odin on 04-08-17
By: Omar El Akkad
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
- A Memoir of Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.
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Worth the listen.
- By SEE on 09-06-21
By: Peter Godwin
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The Company You Keep
- By: Neil Gordon
- Narrated by: Donald Corren, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.
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Audiobook of the Year
- By connie on 05-13-12
By: Neil Gordon
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The Glass Palace
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
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I struggled to finish... enough said.
- By Ty on 05-02-10
By: Amitav Ghosh
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Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
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Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
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All Our Names
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Korey Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
All Our Names is the story of a young man who comes of age during an African revolution, drawn from the hushed halls of his university into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, and the path of revolution leads to almost certain destruction, he leaves behind his country and friends for America. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into the routines of small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past....
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A Tale of Two Continents
- By David on 07-31-14
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Continental Drift
- By: Russell Banks
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Now available for the first time in audiobook format, a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most acclaimed and important writers. Russell Banks' Continental Drift is a masterful novel of hope lost and gained and a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream.
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Give up and die
- By AI on 12-09-21
By: Russell Banks
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Naked Don't Fear the Water
- An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees
- By: Matthieu Aikins
- Narrated by: Nick Nikon
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this extraordinary book, an acclaimed young war reporter chronicles a dangerous journey on the smuggler’s road to Europe, accompanying his friend, an Afghan refugee, in search of a better future.
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Great story, horrible narration
- By AB on 02-25-22
By: Matthieu Aikins
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Oil on Water
- By: Helon Habila