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A Fine Balance
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
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Publisher's summary
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India.
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
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Critic reviews
1997, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Short-listed
2011, Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Winner
"Astonishing. . . . A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life." --Wall Street Journal
"Monumental. . . . Few have caught the real sorrow and inexplicable strength of India, the unaccountable crookedness and sweetness, as well as Mistry." --Pico Iyer, Time
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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
By: Tahmima Anam
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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The Orphan Keeper
- By: Camron Wright
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven-year-old Chellamuthu's life - and his destiny - is forever changed when he is kidnapped from his village in Southern India and sold to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children. His family is desperate to find him, and Chellamuthu anxiously tells the Indian orphanage that he is not an orphan, he has a mother who loves him. But he is told not to worry, he will soon be adopted by a loving family in America.
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5 Star Worthy
- By Kari on 10-26-16
By: Camron Wright
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Wife of the Gods
- A Novel
- By: Kwei Quartey
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
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Detective Inspector Darko Dawson, a good family man and a remarkably intuitive sleuth, is sent to the village of Ketanu---the site of his mother's disappearance many years ago---to solve the murder of an accomplished young AIDS worker. While battling his own anger issues and concerns for his ailing son, Darko explores the motivations and secrets of the residents of Ketanu.
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Engrossing Mystery in a Fascinating Setting
- By Tracey Rains on 04-19-10
By: Kwei Quartey
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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A Change of Climate
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Sandra Duncan
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
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Performance
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Story
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. 30 years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an affair, Anna finds no forgiveness in her heart, and 30 years of repressed rage and grief explode, destroying not only a marriage but also their love, their faith, and everything they thought they were.
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Beautifully written
- By Patricia S. on 10-11-15
By: Hilary Mantel
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Beyond the Pale
- By: Elana Dykewomon
- Narrated by: Elana Dykewomon
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
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Performance
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Story
Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.
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great historical fiction with a lesbian twist
- By Kelly on 11-25-13
By: Elana Dykewomon
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Flame Tree Road
- By: Shona Patel
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
India, 1870s. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a new destiny. When his mother suffers the fate of widowhood - shunned by her loved ones and forced to live in solitary penance - Biren devotes his life to effecting change.
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Riveting Love Story
- By Granny on 01-15-20
By: Shona Patel
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The Year of the Runaways
- By: Sunjeev Sahota
- Narrated by: Sartaj Garewal
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight from India and in desperate search of a new life. Tarlochan, a former rickshaw driver, will say nothing about his past in Bihar, and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the choatic Randeep. Randeep, in turn, has a visa wife in a flat on the other side of town: a clever, devout woman whose cupboards are full of her husband's clothes, in case the immigration men surprise her with a call.
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Maybe easier to read than to listen to.
- By Eric on 06-15-16
By: Sunjeev Sahota
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
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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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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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As a pair of young scholars research the lives of two Victorian poets, they uncover their letters, journals, and poems and track their movements from London to Yorkshire - from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany. What emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passion and ideas.
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Absolutely Excellent
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What listeners say about A Fine Balance
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tina Briskin
- 04-25-20
Simply amazing
I read at least 2-3 books per week. And it has been a very long since a book made me cry. I cried last night. I find it to be amazing that the author manages to connect us with his heroes who may as well be from a different universe from ours. Human vices much as human merits remain the same across cultures and statuses.
Any way: this is a wonderful book, a kind of book you don’t want to put down. Strongly
recommended!
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- SF
- 04-11-09
Great modern history of India plus good characters
If you want to really understand how the class systems in India really work for the lower classes in the 20th century but you need a good story with your history, then this book is for you.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rebekah Hazleton
- 08-13-12
this book may change your life
The characters in this book are so artfully drawn that you come to feel that you know them as friends. The plot is compelling, uplifting at times and heart breaking throughout. For those put off by this, it is important to know that this is how life is indeed for many people in this world, we can't close our eyes to it. The narrator is superb. I can't recommend this book highly enough, but take the second sentence of this review to heart, make sure the timing is right for you to receive all that Mistry has to offer.
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- Ásta
- 03-30-18
Finishing this book is like losing a friend
Loves this book. It is so fluid and eloquent and the characters uncannily familiar. I got absorbed into the life and loss of the characters and they became like friends. I actually cried when it was over.
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- Wilbert van der Kruk
- 12-25-17
excellent voice performer, excellent story.
the voice artist is doing an exceptional performance. the story is vivid, detailed and this brings the story for me into a very clear mind picture.
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- Todd S Cutler
- 08-18-18
Tragedy heaped upon tragedy
Wonderful writing and the Tolstoy parallels are obvious however sometimes I felt like Mistry had a strange sadistic contempt for the reader. The awful tragedies in the book pile on top of each other until you are almost numb with horror and sadness. Similar to "A Little Life" the characters we meet throughout the book sometimes seem to be conjured only to be repeatedly destroyed. An early romance involving a shared love of music and an umbrella was beautiful and my favorite part of the book. The ending seemed unnecessarily cruel.
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- Kate
- 07-14-20
One of the best books of my life
I am speechless. Every character was incredible. I was never bored. Amazing writing and delivery.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-23-21
Worth the time and credit
A beautiful story and very well read. Each characters backstory is like a book unto itself and then all the books are woven together to tell a very real story. Highly recommend!
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- David
- 05-26-15
Remarkable!
Extraordinary literature--powerful, sad and uplifting, gorgeous writing, complete characters, gripping plot, observations of human nature are timeless, epic and true. Lee is at his finest, which is as good as it gets.
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- evelyn
- 06-05-15
Beautiful Story
Great Characters. As one of the characters says in the book, this story is " a fine balance between hope and despair".
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