Madeleine Thien has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Simple Recipes.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing: International Edition
Summary
Winner of the Giller Prize and Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize "A vivid, magisterial novel that reaches back to China's civil war and up to the present day." (The Guardian) "In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. I was 10 years old." Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations - those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story. Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming's father, the shy and brilliant composer Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli, were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China's political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences. With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality.
©2016 Madeleine Thien (P)2020 Recorded Books, Inc.
Simple Recipes
Summary
Winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the City of Vancouver Book Award, and a Regional Finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book
Longing, familiarity, and hope suffuse these stories as they mine the charged territory of relationships - subtly weaving in conflicts between generations and cultures. Madeleine Thien's characters in some way want to make amends, to understand the events that have shaped their lives. A young woman searches back in time for the pivotal moment when her family lost faith in itself. Two sisters keep a vigil outside their former house, hoping their long-absent mother will appear one last time. A wife helps her husband grieve for the woman he has loved since childhood. A daughter remembers the simple ritual she once shared with her father and the moment when her unconditional love for him was called into question.
Compassionate and revealing, delicate and wise, these stories chart the uneven progress of love and lay bare the heartbreaking truths at the core of our closest bonds.
©2003 Madeleine Thien (P)2018 Vintage Canada
Dogs at the Perimeter: International Edition
Summary
One starless night Janie's childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from Phnom Penh, Janie and her family were forced to live out in the open: cold, hungry, and under constant surveillance. Caught up in a political storm that brought starvation to millions, tore families apart, and changed the world forever, Janie lost everyone she loved. Now, three decades later, Janie's life in Montreal is unraveling. Weaving together the threads of Janie's life, Dogs at the Perimeter evokes totalitarianism through the eyes of a little girl and draws a remarkable map of the mind's battle with memory, loss, and the horrors of war.
©2017 Madeleine Thien (P)2020 Recorded Books, Inc.
Certainty
Summary
In her stunning debut novel about a woman's journey to unravel the mystery of her parents' lives, Madeleine Thien proves herself a writer of vision, maturity, and style. Certainty follows Gail Lim, a producer of radio documentaries in Vancouver, as she works to uncover the history of her parents' relationship and struggles to come to terms with the events that brought them together. Gail's search for the truth leads her to Amsterdam where she meets a war photographer named Sipke, who tells her the story of a woman named Ani - and in so doing, reveals valuable information that not only sheds further light on Gail's parents, but also brings Gail face to face with the complications in her own life and closer to unraveling the questions that have gripped her imagination. With a voice at once vivid and poignant, Thien crafts a story that explores the legacies of loss, the dislocations of war, and the redemptive qualities of love.
©2007 Madeleine Thien (P)2018 Penguin Random House Canada