-
The Occidental Hotel
- Narrated by: Adam Daniel Mezei
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 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
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
The Occidental Hotel
Buy for $17.93
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 213
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 201
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 201
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,116
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,845
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,852
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
The Great Good Thing
- A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
- By: Andrew Klavan
- Narrated by: Andrew Klavan
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 2,179
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,975
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1,971
How did a New York-born, Jewish, former-atheist novelist and screenwriter - a winner of multiple Edgar Awards, whose books became films with Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas - find himself at the age of 50 being baptized and confessing Jesus as Lord? That's a tale worth telling.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Profound and Beautiful
- By Jason Hague on 09-30-16
By: Andrew Klavan
-
Black Boy
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 314
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 313
Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Outstanding
- By Trevin Harvey on 11-11-20
By: Richard Wright
-
The Red Caddy
- Into the Unknown with Edward Abbey
- By: Charles Bowden
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 20
A passionate advocate for preserving wilderness and fighting the bureaucratic and business forces that would destroy it, Edward Abbey (1927-1989) wrote fierce, polemical books such as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang that continue to inspire environmental activists.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Up Against the Wall! We've come for your dozer!
- By Andrew Caffrey on 05-21-22
By: Charles Bowden
-
An Area of Darkness
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 40
A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Go slowly with this one, or it's a slog
- By John S. on 08-15-21
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 213
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 201
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 201
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,116
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,845
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,852
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
The Great Good Thing
- A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
- By: Andrew Klavan
- Narrated by: Andrew Klavan
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 2,179
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,975
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1,971
How did a New York-born, Jewish, former-atheist novelist and screenwriter - a winner of multiple Edgar Awards, whose books became films with Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas - find himself at the age of 50 being baptized and confessing Jesus as Lord? That's a tale worth telling.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Profound and Beautiful
- By Jason Hague on 09-30-16
By: Andrew Klavan
-
Black Boy
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 314
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 313
Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Outstanding
- By Trevin Harvey on 11-11-20
By: Richard Wright
-
The Red Caddy
- Into the Unknown with Edward Abbey
- By: Charles Bowden
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 20
A passionate advocate for preserving wilderness and fighting the bureaucratic and business forces that would destroy it, Edward Abbey (1927-1989) wrote fierce, polemical books such as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang that continue to inspire environmental activists.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Up Against the Wall! We've come for your dozer!
- By Andrew Caffrey on 05-21-22
By: Charles Bowden
-
An Area of Darkness
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 40
A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Go slowly with this one, or it's a slog
- By John S. on 08-15-21
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
The Magician
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 873
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 754
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 748
The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Terrific listening experience
- By M. Mead on 09-17-21
By: Colm Toibin
-
One Writer's Beginnings
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Eudora Welty
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 27
Born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, Eudora Welty shares details of her upbringing that show us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing as well. Everyday sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Recording does not align with published version
- By Zoe Elena on 02-13-22
By: Eudora Welty
-
These Fevered Days
- Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson
- By: Martha Ackmann
- Narrated by: Martha Ackmann
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, "All things are ready" - and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely "at home" (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson's interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent toward publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer. In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson's life through 10 decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Captivating But Too Much Information
- By Sara B. on 08-05-20
By: Martha Ackmann
-
The Prince of Tides
- A Novel
- By: Pat Conroy
- Narrated by: Alan Carlson
- Length: 25 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 313
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 280
A modern American classic and a family saga that spans decades, this is the story of the volatile Tom Wingo, his brilliant but troubled twin sister, Savannah, and the complex and damaging family legacy they share. Moving between the sparkling glamour of New York City and the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country, The Prince of Tides is Pat Conroy’s masterwork.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator terrible with women's voices
- By K. Stark on 02-06-23
By: Pat Conroy
-
A Freewheelin' Time
- A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
- By: Suze Rotolo
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Suze Rotolo chronicles her coming of age in Greenwich Village during the 1960s and the early days of the folk music explosion, when Bob Dylan was finding his voice and she was his muse.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
An extraordinary woman sheds light on her time, and Dylan
- By Jeanie on 05-11-22
By: Suze Rotolo
-
Red Comet
- The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
- By: Heather Clark
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 45 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 341
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 291
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 289
With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing!
- By Blurryface on 10-28-20
By: Heather Clark
-
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
- How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life
- By: Sanford D. Greenberg, Art Garfunkel - introduction
- Narrated by: Art Garfunkel
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
The remarkable and inspiring story of a Columbia undergrad from a poor Jewish family who, after losing his eyesight to disease during his junior year, finds the power to break through the darkness and fulfill his vision for a life of great professional success and distinguished public service.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Fantastic!
- By Suzanne on 10-07-20
By: Sanford D. Greenberg, and others
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Borges and Me
- An Encounter
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 142
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 122
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 121
In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls “a kind of novelistic memoir”, Jay Parini takes us back 50 years, when he fled the United States for Scotland - in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Super Sexist
- By Reader on 05-18-21
By: Jay Parini
-
Zora and Langston
- A Story of Friendship and Betrayal
- By: Yuval Taylor
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
They were best friends. They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes, the author of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "Let America Be America Again", first met in 1925, at a great gathering of black and white literati, and they fascinated each other.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating Story
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-19
By: Yuval Taylor
-
Here We Are
- My Friendship with Philip Roth
- By: Benjamin Taylor
- Narrated by: Benjamin Taylor
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 19
So begins Benjamin Taylor's Here We Are, the unvarnished portrait of his best friend and one of America's greatest writers. Needless to say, Philip Roth's place in the canon is secure, but what is less clear is what the man himself was like. In Here We Are, Benjamin Taylor's beautifully constructed memoir, we see him as a mortal man, experiencing the joys and sorrows of aging, reflecting on his own writing, and doing something we all love to do: passing the time in the company of his closest friend.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Thankful
- By K. King on 06-10-20
By: Benjamin Taylor
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 573
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 378
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher's summary
A brooding fugitive hides out in a crumbling hotel that was once filled with celebrities enjoying the successes of postwar America. He is a racist with a criminal past, an anti-hero who reflects on the ruins of the South and simultaneously on the life of a German performance artist called “Jupp”. The fictional Jupp is a thinly-veiled cipher for the late real-life controversial German artist, Joseph Beuys.
At once echoing the moody worlds of W. G. Sebald and incorporating outrageous elements of pulp fiction, this novel of dark romanticism is not for optimists seeking redemption, but for those willing to take a look into a searing heart of darkness.
More from the same
Narrator
Related to this topic
-
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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Winesburg, Ohio
- By: Sherwood Anderson
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 191
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 161
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 160
Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Isolation, Loneliness, Love & Midwest Grotesque
- By Darwin8u on 06-27-13
-
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 149
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
-
The Long Loneliness
- The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist
- By: Dorothy Day
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 109
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 83
When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as “a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality...founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than 50 years in numerous battles of social justice.” Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous conversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Required reading for any who work in poverty
- By marguerite allred-crawford on 11-16-20
By: Dorothy Day
-
Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 62
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
-
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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Winesburg, Ohio
- By: Sherwood Anderson
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 191
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 161
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 160
Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Isolation, Loneliness, Love & Midwest Grotesque
- By Darwin8u on 06-27-13
-
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 149
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
-
The Long Loneliness
- The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist
- By: Dorothy Day
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 109
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 83
When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as “a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality...founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than 50 years in numerous battles of social justice.” Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous conversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Required reading for any who work in poverty
- By marguerite allred-crawford on 11-16-20
By: Dorothy Day
-
Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 62
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
-
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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great story well told
- By B. Cohen on 11-23-23
By: Ariel Sabar
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 39
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
-
Desert Notebooks
- A Road Map for the End of Time
- By: Ben Ehrenreich
- Narrated by: David Bendena
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Layering climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences, Desert Notebooks offers a vital and necessary chronicle of our past and our present - perfect for fans of Robert Macfarlane and Elizabeth Rush - that’s unflinching, urgent, and yet timeless and profound.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Not about the desert, Not about Joshua Tree
- By Steve on 07-12-20
By: Ben Ehrenreich
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Black Boy
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 314
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 313
Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Outstanding
- By Trevin Harvey on 11-11-20
By: Richard Wright
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 573
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 378
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,116
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,845
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,852
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
-
Who Killed My Father
- By: Édouard Louis
- Narrated by: Edouard Louis
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 31
Who Killed My Father rips into France’s long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French - at the minimum - of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely 50 years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: “You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death.” It’s as simple as that.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Powerful. Poetic. Sparse. Piercing.
- By Theophile Jones on 06-01-23
By: Édouard Louis
-
Alburquerque
- By: Rudolfo Anaya
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Abrán González always knew he was different. Called a coyote because of his fair skin, the kid from Barelas found escape through boxing and became one of the youngest Golden Gloves champs. But the arrival of a letter from a dying woman turns his entire life into a lie. The revelation that he was adopted makes him feel like an orphan and sends him on a quest to find his birth father.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Alburquerque
- By Paul Hernandez on 04-29-20
By: Rudolfo Anaya
-
Istanbul
- Memories and the City
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 209
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 178
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Terrible pronunciation
- By K. Jaynes on 02-25-18
By: Orhan Pamuk