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The Lotus Eaters
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- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
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Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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First They Killed My Father
- A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
- By: Loung Ung
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
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Brutal, Heartbreaking
- By Gillian on 01-27-15
By: Loung Ung
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The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4
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- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.
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Only a few decent stories in this bunch.
- By Jerry on 12-06-14
By: Ellen Datlow - author/editor, and others
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Never Say Die
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Twenty years after her father's plane crashes in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Willy Jane Maitland is finally tracking his last moves. She recognizes the danger, but her search for the truth is the only thing that matters.
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So corny
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A Golden Age
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As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
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sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
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American War
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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
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Nocturne
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It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF.
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Blech
- By Caroline H. on 02-20-11
By: Diane Armstrong
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The Kite Runner
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Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
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A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
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The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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White Dog Fell from the Sky
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Botswana, 1976: Isaac Muthethe thinks he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.
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Unexpectedly Stunning Work!
- By Kathi on 03-15-13
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Love, Africa
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A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past 20 years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man.
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Loved this book!!!
- By Benjamin on 05-26-17
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What listeners say about The Lotus Eaters
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-10-14
Travels in the Vietnam war, by a photographer.
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would recommend this book to anyone, it is read, not given characterization, but the readers voice is quite calm and soothing. Voices would have been way too hard, due to the ethnicity of many participants.i
Who was your favorite character and why?
I would have to say Helen, although the story tends to focus on her in the book. In actually, there were a few people with whom were standouts.
Did Kirsten Potter do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
I don't feel she did any characterization, just read, not giving emotion to anyone, but in your minds eye, you could see and feel the differences.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I wasn't pleased with the way the book ended. When the prisoners are being released, you had hope that the Vietnamese man, whom was already in the states, safe, he chose to go to Cambodia to get Helen out safely, if possible. I guess I wanted a good ending, not just ended.
Any additional comments?
I will re-use to this more than once. The title was a tad misleading, but the book was meaty and gave a full measure.
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- Tim
- 10-13-14
Lost Generation
This is a good book but the narrators voice was so soothing it allowed me to day dream too much about other things. I think it would have been a much better book with a better narrator.
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- Reed Ramlow
- 08-18-24
The Locusts
Tatjana Soli's debut novel, "The Lotus Eaters," is a breathtaking portrayal of the Vietnam War. Soli's meticulous research immerses the reader in the heart of Saigon and the southern regions during America's turbulent campaign. Her vivid descriptions vividly evoke both the early optimism and the grim realities that marked this period.
One of the novel's strengths is its portrayal of the driven photographers who risked everything to capture the war's essence on film. Soli adeptly captures their raw ambition, suggesting that perhaps "The Locusts" would have been an equally fitting title.
At the center of the story is Linh, Helen's lover in the later stages of the war, whose quiet heroism contrasts with the charismatic Sam Darrow, their mentor and Helen's former lover. Initially overshadowed by Helen's intense affair with Sam, Linh emerges as a compelling figure in his own right.
The novel reaches a crescendo in its final chapters, as Helen and two fellow photographers venture into Cambodia to document the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. The narrative tension here is palpable, gripping the reader with a visceral intensity rarely found in literature. Soli's skillful storytelling had me on edge.
"The Lotus Eaters" is a solid effort and comes highly recommended, particularly for those seeking a fresh fictional perspective on the Vietnam War. Soli's ability to blend historical fact with compelling characters and a gripping plot makes this a standout novel in the genre.
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- Louis
- 05-18-12
A female journalists' view of the Vietnam War
Soli writes with passion, not merely of what we expect--red dirt and thick canopied jungle and the Casablanca-seediness of a French province in decay--but of the quiet moments that bonded a love triangle.
The war weary photographer, running his foot along the edge of the precipice is a familiar one, but he is joined by a colleague and lover. There is a third member of the triangle. It is not the estranged wife bottled up in a ranch-style house in the US--although she does appear--but the Vietnamese 'native guide' who respects him, loves her, and is torn by the Vietnamese civil war.
Soli, like her characters, is best when away from the war, protecting what is left. There is a scene in Cambodia's Angor Wat where the great trees are breaking the stone temples apart as if they were fresh bread, and again in the spidery capillaries of the Mekong, on a small sacred island, where the Buddhist dead replenish the soil and nurture orchids.
The performance is good, with a touch of Kathleen Turner's weary sultry voice, which, unfortunately, reflects the prose as both the writing and voice crackle with static in the more passionate moments.
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11 people found this helpful
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Overall
- erin
- 08-16-10
disappointing
Some books are great IRL but don't transfer to audio very well; this is one of them. Something about the structure of the paragraphs makes it difficult to follow in this format. To make matters worse, the narrator is unnecessarily breathy and straining. I wish I could return it.
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4 people found this helpful
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- pauli9363
- 01-29-15
Well written and well performed.
There is an irony in the war photographers' quest for personal achievement and acclaim being so petty in comparison to the scope of combat atrocities photographed and personal risk endured to get the pictures.
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- Emily
- 06-30-10
Best book I've read yet this year
I love novels about Asia, especially about the fall-out from European colonialism -- novels set in Asia or written by Asians. I was very disappointed by Chang-Rae Lee's "The Surrendered" but Soli's book just leaves me wanting more. I want to enter into the world of her characters, as enthralled with them and their Viet Nam as they are with the war that surrounds them. I listened to this book as an audio recording and left many things undone in the days that it took me to listen to all of it.
"The Lotus Eaters" is extraordinarily well-written, from the lyricism of the individual sentences to the taught construction of the story, beginning near the end, then going back ten years to tell the middle of the story, and finishing when Saigon falls in 1975. I knew, from the first chapters, that Helen would fall in love with Linh, that they would be wretched apart at the end of the war, that she would stay behind in Saigon without him. But the middle of the story was compelling nonetheless, to learn how Helen grew into her own as a war reporter and how she fell in love with two men, who both represented some aspect of the Viet Nam war. We have Sam Darrow, the American photojournalist who has become addicted to the thrill of the battle and is oblivious to almost everything outside his viewfinder; and then there's Linh -- for me, the more mysterious and compelling figure -- a Vietnamese poet and spy who loves Helen for long years before his love is returned. Love between a White woman and an Asian man is not frequently explored in literature or art, making this book unusual in that the love affair between the Americans Helen and Darrow is a precursor to the central romance of the book, that of Helen and Linh. The improbability of their love -- as improbable as anything good coming out of war -- makes for one of the most compelling romance stories I have ever read.
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23 people found this helpful
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- Malu
- 10-21-12
Intense narrative from Vietnam War days
One of the best books I've listened to -- you will get caught up in these characters and this story.
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- Andre
- 06-17-10
Beautifully written...and read
After reading numerous glowing reviews for this book I was curious...but also apprehensive because I'm not a fan of "Vietnam war books". However, this book entranced me from the first page to the last. Soli does an exceptional job crafting complex and compelling characters. Her descriptions of Vietnam make the country come alive -- almost emerging as another character. If you are looking for a simplified political parable for or against the war, look elsewhere. For those seeking an original work of fiction that will transport you to another time and place, The Lotus Eaters delivers.
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- Suzanne
- 10-05-12
Beautifully painted story!
Would you listen to The Lotus Eaters again? Why?
Yes, especially after being told that the author never traveled to Viet Nam~ You can truly see the colors, taste the tastes and smell the smells!
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Lotus Eaters?
There were many poignant scenes, passion, compassion, horror of war, moments captured and lost...
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2 people found this helpful