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We Need New Names
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
Finalist for the Booker Prize: the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America (New York Times Book Review), from the author of Glory.
Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.
But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her—from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee—while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.
"Original, witty, and devastating."—People
Critic reviews
Winner of the 2014 PEN / Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize
Winner of the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature
Finalist for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award
One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 2013
One of National Public Radio's Great Reads of 2013
"A deeply felt and fiercely written debut novel ... The voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for [Darling] is utterly distinctive—by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Bulawayo describes all this in brilliant language, alive and confident, often funny, strong in its ability to make Darling's African life immediate ... She demonstrates a striking ability to capture the uneasiness that accompanies a newcomers arrival in America."—Uzodinma Iweala, The New York Times Book Review
"Bulawayo mixes imagination and reality, combining an intuitive attention to detail with startling, visceral imagery ... This book is a provocative, haunting debut from an author to watch."—Elle
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One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is 51. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child’s paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.
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a weirdly loving diatribe against pervs.
- By Dane Flakeman on 05-21-11
By: Margaux Fragoso
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Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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The Hollow Ground
- By: Natalie S. Harnett
- Narrated by: Luci Christian
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
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The Joy Luck Club
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Gwendoline Yeo
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Four Chinese women, drawn together by the shadow of their past, meet in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and to "say" stories to each other. Nearly 40 years later, one of the women has died, and her daughter arrives to take her place. However, the daughter never expected to learn of her mother's secret lifelong wish - and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation creates among the women an urgent need to remember the past.
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Joy Luck - abridged
- By Leslie Teicholz on 03-16-04
By: Amy Tan
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How to Survive a Summer
- A Novel
- By: Nick White
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to "cure" homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he's forced to face his past - and his role in another camper's death. As he recounts the events surrounding his "failed rehabilitation", Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer.
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A story full of heart and healing
- By ZippyBippy on 05-06-18
By: Nick White
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Slice of Cherry
- By: Dia Reeves
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Kit and Fancy Cordelle are sisters of the best kind: best friends, best confidantes, and best accomplices. The daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy are used to feeling like outsiders, and that's just the way they like it. But in Portero, where the weird and wild run rampant, the Cordelle sisters are hardly the oddest or most dangerous creatures around. It's no surprise when Kit and Fancy start to give in to their deepest desire: the desire to kill.
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Surreal, riveting tale
- By pakkmom on 02-11-11
By: Dia Reeves
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Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
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A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
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A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
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Caramelo
- By: Sandra Cisneros
- Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to “the other side”, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next.
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Love, family, history, and fantasy, Caramelo
- By Michele on 08-07-20
By: Sandra Cisneros
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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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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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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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 New Moon's Arms
- By: Nalo Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Gin Hammond
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Calamity is confronting two big transitions: the death of her beloved father and the beginning of menopause, a physical shift that has rekindled her gift for finding lost things. Suddenly, she is getting hot flashes that seem to forge objects out of thin air, most notably a four-year old boy. As Calamity takes the child into her care, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Then, Calamity must reawaken to the mysteries surrounding her own childhood and the early disappearance of her mother.
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What a joy
- By newmoon on 07-05-19
By: Nalo Hopkinson
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smart, compassionate, confronting and enjoyable
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What listeners say about We Need New Names
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- FanB14
- 06-10-13
African Girl Does US
Born in Africa, Darling and family live in paucity; no shoes or food. Stealing guavas and occasionally breaking in homes to raid fridges, siblings are relatively happy with each other. In hopes of a better future, Darling moves to Detroit with relatives and finds a blustery winter with plenty of food, school, and work opportunities.
No new names presents no new information and didn't draw me in as a reader. The writing is a singular narrative, choppy and uneven, with no real point. The book is akin to opening an ordinary girl's journal and reading haphazard entries devoid of profound meaning, lacking purpose or excitement.
If you choose to listen to this one, expect a realistic, but bland journey of an African girl's assimilation to current day American culture.
Seeking well-written, gritty, emotionally gut wrenching drama? Download, "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave or "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah for good reads. Volumes of more poignant tales of poverty and perseverance surrounding African culture are readily available elsewhere. Save your credit.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Dr.
- 08-22-13
Worth a Listen
NoViolet has created a distinctive voice for Darling - the child protagonist of this story who grows up over the course of the book. Her early life is spent in Africa - in a land never named - amid incredible desperation and poverty. There is no sermonizing, sentimentalizing, or editorializing about her predicament, however, and Darling is allowed to describe what is of interest to her in her own words. Meaning that when she is very young she focuses on things that a very young child would be interested in. At times, I was not so interested in what a child was seeing - but it was important to persevere because these early childhood experiences help to make sense of how she sees America after immigrating.
After moving to America, Darling becomes a thoughtful interpreter of what it means to be an African trying to grow up in America. Some of it is insightful, some of it funny, and some of it a sad indictment of life in America.
Robin Miles - the narrator - is reason enough to listen to this book. She is OUTSTANDING. She moves easily from child to adult, male to female, and African inflected to American street slang. Simply riveting narration!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Julie W. Capell
- 01-05-14
Strong beginning and great narration
This book was described to me as telling the story of a young African girl’s immigration to the United States and her struggles to become an American. So I was a bit surprised when about one-half of the book was spent describing her childhood in Africa. As it turned out, this was by far the best part of the book. Perhaps because I myself was born and bred in the United States, I found her descriptions of everyday life in Africa much more interesting than those of life in America.
What I did find utterly convincing was the way Bulawayo inhabited her child protagonist, and then later in the book, the teenager. The author has a very unique way of showing the thought processes going on in the heads of her characters, such as the child’s delight in playing simple games, her obsession with food, and her occasional defiance of adult authority. Each scene unfolds from the child’s point-of-view, more often than not revealing her incomplete understanding of what is going on in the larger world around her. This is incredibly effective in several scenes in the first part of the book when the protagonist and her friends either witness or (nearly) perpetrate incredible cruelty without actually understanding or being affected by it.
The author skips a few years in the protagonist’s life and presents her as a young teenager already living in America. The transition was awkward and left me wondering why there was little to no explanation of how the girl ended up living in Michigan. The descriptions of difficulties with the simplest things-like making oneself understood over the telephone, or answering misguided questions about one’s country—were well done and were undoubtedly drawn from real life. So, too, the short sections in which she deals with the angst of the exile, a fascinating combination of exhilarating triumph (look at me! I have a home of my own, children who are Americans!) and deep sadness (never being able to return home, watching one’s children ignore or belittle traditions from the homeland). There are also some telling critiques of American society, but overall this entire half of the book felt more preachy than enlightened. Long passages about teenaged girls’ obsession with clothes and porn seemed to serve little narrative purpose, and the ending was strangely difficult to understand.
So I am glad I read this but for a more compelling—and nonfiction—take on Africans in exile in America, I would highly recommend Rescuing Regina by Josephe Marie Flynn.
[I listened to this as an audio book read by Robin Miles. She did a fantastic job of doing all kinds of different accents, very nuanced, wonderful performance.]
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3 people found this helpful
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- KP
- 12-22-14
First part is best
While the writing was often beautiful, this book fell flat, in my opinion. I couldn’t care very much about the main character. Perhaps I did in the beginning, but she and her story became less interesting to me as the book went along. Perhaps it’s because I felt the author was trying to make her story TOO much about the recent history of Zimbabwe and not enough of a novel. The characters all became archetypes of the various problems that immigrants face. First, there was the harsh life in Africa, then there were the harsh realities of trying to fit in to American life, and finally there came the realization that in many ways immigrants can never fit in to the new country, but they can never go home, either.
I thought the first half of the book was more compelling. In the middle there was a section that was told in the first person plural, like the book about Japanese picture brides, The Buddha in the Attic. That approach is really unsuccessful, in my opinion. It removes the reader from the action, and just seems preachy or false.
I’m sure that one is supposed to feel pity for the main character and sympathize with her, and I do feel sad about all the harsh circumstances. Somehow, other books with similar situations have managed to pull me in more than this one, however.
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- Carla
- 12-04-13
One of the best narrator performances I've heard
What does Robin Miles bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
"We Need New Names" is a lovely, engaging, and moving book at any rate. But Ms Miles's narration carries it to a completely new level of immersion and beauty. She provides a crisp, beautiful rendering of Darling's voice as a young girl with a childish inflection and a strong Zimbabwean accent, and transitions later in the book to a more teenaged inflection and self-consciously American accent. The voices she provides for other characters add flavor as well, such as the contrast between the voice of the American NGO workers' broad Californian dialect and the speech of Darlings' friends; or, the contrast between the adolescent Darling's carefully calibrated "proper English" and her school-friend's "Ebonics" (as the friend herself calls it in the book). The interaction of speech and voice and identity forms a central theme of "We Need New Names", and Ms Miles's narration breathes palpable life into this theme. Just magnificent work. I am off to search Audible for other books she has narrated.
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- Kristi
- 06-06-17
Striking imagery, skillful narration - go for it!
I was introduced to NoViolet's work in a writing course and became an immediate fan. She is magical with description and mood. So very thankful for the relevance of the subject matter: immigrants' complicated and precarious position was brought to light with reality and compassion.
Robin Miles - freaking talented. One of the best narrators and perfect for bringing this book to life.
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- drewster
- 05-14-16
Great immersion, but without resolution
Would you consider the audio edition of We Need New Names to be better than the print version?
The book does an excellent job of capturing what it may have felt like for a young child experiencing the epic social and cultural transformations depicted in the book. As this is a work of fiction, one might have expected some sort of parable, or a complete story arc to be drawn. As it stands, the story is a series of loosely coupled vignettes which are held together by the historic story of a nation in turmoil.
The evolution of language in both the book and the performance are well done, and one of the highlights of the book.
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- Megan
- 04-04-16
Takes me home
Quite uncanny how this book rung so true to my upbringing in Zim and my transformation in America. Such a great read.
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- art lover
- 04-07-15
Even better the second time, then the third
If I recall correctly Audible recommended this book for me after I heard Half of a Yellow Sun. I am so glad! I play books to entertain my models as I paint, and every one of them has enjoyed the book. This time through I was more aware of the artistry Robin Miles brings to the recording. The many accents and attitudes she portrays do justice to the author's blend of humor and pathos. It is a great great book.
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- Bay Area Girl
- 03-23-14
Country -- which one is home; what is a country?
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes child narrator reminded me of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird -- truth teller who is willing to really see what is around her. The reality and the metaphorical use of "country" is well developed. The Zimbabwe part with her friends seems better and less rushed than the US par but maybe that was because it was so new for me. So many perfect little sentences. Repetition used like a chant. The "names" are intriguingly important. The cataloging of details is perfect.
What did you like best about this story?
The games the kids play which carry throughout the novel.
What does Robin Miles bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
exquisite timing and diction -- her accent reminded me this was an African's story but was very clear and understandable. Changed later in the story to reflect the American characters.
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