Maaza Mengiste has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.7★ across 10 ratings. The most-rated is The Shadow King.
The Shadow King
Summary
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. A Times Audiobook of the Week. Ethiopia, 1935. With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade. Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers?
©2020 Maaza Mengiste (P)2020 Canongate Books Ltd
The Shadow King
Summary
"A brilliant novel, lyrically lifting history towards myth. It's also compulsively readable. I devoured it in two days." (Salman Rushdie) In 1935, orphaned servant Hirut struggles to adapt to her new household as Ethiopia faces Mussolini's looming invasion. As the battles begin in earnest, Hirut and other women must care for the wounded. But when Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia is about to lose hope, Hirut helps to disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor to keep the fight alive. She becomes his guard, inspiring women to join the war against fascism. In this extraordinary, beautifully told epic, Hirut overcomes rape, violence, and imprisonment, finding the strength to fight for her country's freedom and her own. Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a searing story of ordinary women and the advanced army they courageously opposed. Set against the first real conflict of World War II, The Shadow King is a heartrending, indelible exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.
©2019 Maaza Mengiste (P)2019 Recorded Books
Beneath the Lion's Gaze
Summary
This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement---a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia. Beneath the Lion's Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction before. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic, and indelibly tragic, Beneath the Lion's Gaze is a transcendent and powerful debut.
©2010 Maaza Mengiste (P)2010 Tantor
365 Daily Buddhist Thoughts
Summary
Buddhism has been in the minds, hearts, and lives of men and women since the first historically recorded Buddha reincarnated in ancient India. The person we know today as the Buddha, who is also known as Shakyamuni and Gautama, has been revered and honored for over 2500 years. His profound teachings have given hope and meaning to the lives of countless millions of people right up till the present day. But, just like us, he was just another fragile human being, filled with hopes, dreams, fears and concerns for the people around him and for the environment. We are not told who his spiritual teachers were, but like us today, he must have searched for the wisdom that he needed to attempt to explain his purpose in life and his place in the vast universe. Many of the quotes you will find on these pages are from the mouth of Shakyamuni. Teachings in those ancient times where almost always oral and passed on from student to student and hence generation to generation. You will also find the comforting words of modern Buddhas such as Nichiren as well as modern wisdom from today’s great Buddhist teachers.
©2018 Laurence Flood (P)2021 Laurence Flood