Assaf Cohen has narrated 20 audiobooks on Listento.it by 29 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.9★ across 235 ratings. The most-rated is Refugee.
Refugee
Summary
A tour de force from acclaimed author Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087), this timely and powerful novel tells the story of three different children seeking refuge. Josef is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world.... Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America.... Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe.... All three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers - from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But there is always the hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, shocking connections will tie their stories together in the end. Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087, Projekt 1065) delivers an action-packed novel that tackles topics both timely and timeless: courage, survival, and the quest for home.
©2017 Alan Gratz (P)2017 Scholastic Inc.
The Fall of Heaven
Summary
An immersive, gripping account of the rise and fall of Iran's glamorous Pahlavi dynasty, written with the cooperation of the late shah's widow, Empress Farah. In this remarkably human portrait of one of the 20th century's most complicated personalities, author Andrew Scott Cooper traces Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's life from childhood through his ascension to the throne in 1941. He highlights the turbulence of the postwar era, during which the shah survived assassination attempts and coup plots to build a modern, pro-Western state and launch Iran onto the world stage as one of the world's top five powers. Listeners get the story of the shah's political career alongside the story of his courtship and marriage to Farah Diba, who became a power in her own right; the story of the beloved family they created; and an exclusive look at life inside the palace during the Iranian Revolution. Cooper's investigative account ultimately delivers the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty through the eyes of those who were there: leading Iranian revolutionaries; President Jimmy Carter and White House officials; US Ambassador William Sullivan and his staff in the American embassy in Tehran; American families caught up in the drama; and even Empress Farah herself, along with the rest of the Iranian imperial family. At once intimate and sweeping, The Fall of Heaven recreates in stunning detail the dramatic and final days of one of the world's most legendary ruling families, the unseating of which helped set the stage for the current state of the Middle East.
©2016 Andrew Scott Cooper (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
No Mission Is Impossible
Summary
A riveting follow-up to Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal's account of the most memorable missions of the Mossad, No Mission Is Impossible sheds light on some of the most harrowing, nail-biting operations of the Israeli special forces. Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service brought to life the gripping, legendary missions of Israeli's national intelligence force like never before, capturing the danger of the operations and the bravery of the operatives who risked everything to complete their assignments. Now, in No Mission Is Impossible, Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal return with the intensely absorbing, fast-paced story of 30 of the boldest missions of the Israeli special forces. Bar-Zohar and Mishal depict in electrifying detail major battles, raids in enemy territory, and death-defying commando missions while also sharing the personal stories of both soldiers and top commanders, revealing their hopes and fears. The stories are often of victories, but sometimes they're of immense failures. They run side by side with the accounts of the lives and accomplishments of some of Israel's most prominent figures, including Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon, the brothers Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and Avigdor Kahalani. We follow Sharon, from his near death at the battle of Latrun in 1948 to his crossing of Suez in 1973; we are with Ehud Barak, dressed in women's clothes, when he commands a daring raid in Beirut in 1973, and then when he is elected prime minister in 1999. Besides recounting these mesmerizing, high-stakes missions, No Mission Is Impossible includes an interview in each chapter with a major figure who took part in the mission discussed, including some of the most prominent players in Israeli politics. Captivating and eye opening, No Mission Is Impossible is essential listening for anyone interested in understanding how these crucial missions shaped Israel and the world at large.
©2015 Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled
Summary
Reminiscent of the work of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, an astonishing collection of intimate wartime testimonies and poetic fragments from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have been transformed by revolution, war, and flight. Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights. The government's ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard, while the stories told about them have been distorted by broad-brush dread and political expediency. This fierce and poignant collection changes that. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is a breathtaking mosaic of firsthand testimonials from the front lines. Some of the testimonies are eloquent narratives that could stand alone as short stories; others are only a few sentences, poetic and aphoristic. Together, they cohere into an unforgettable chronicle that is a testament not only to the power of storytelling but to the strength of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.
©2017 Wendy Pearlman (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Stalin
Summary
Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes - as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag - has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the 20th century. But though the facts of Stalin’s reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundation - human, psychological and physical - that supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of 73. Through the lens of personality - Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them - the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old. He gives us the details of their quotidian and monstrous lives: Stalin’s favorites in music, movies, literature (Hemingway, The Forsyte Saga and The Last of the Mohicans were at the top of his list), food and history (he took Ivan the Terrible as his role model and swore by Lenin’s dictum “a revolution without firing squads is meaningless”). We see him among his courtiers, his informal but deadly game of power played out at dinners and parties at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We see the debauchery, paranoia, and cravenness that ruled the lives of Stalin’s inner court, and we see how the dictator played them one against the other in order to hone the awful efficiency of his killing machine. With stunning attention to detail, Montefiore documents the crimes, small and large, of all the members of Stalin’s court. And he traces the intricate and shifting web of their relationships as the relative warmth of Stalin’s rule in the early 1930s gives way to the Great Terror of the late 1930s, the upheaval of World War II (there has never been as acute an account of Stalin’s meeting at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt) and the horrific postwar years when he terrorized his closest associates as unrelentingly as he did the rest of his country. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship and, as well, a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. It is a galvanizing portrait: razor-sharp, sensitive, and unforgiving.
©2007 Simon Sebag Montefiore (P)2019 Random House Audio
Correspondents
Summary
The world is Rita Khoury’s oyster. The bright and driven daughter of a Boston-area Irish Arab family that has risen over the generations from poor immigrants to part of the coastal elite, Rita grows up in a 1980s cultural mishmash. Corned beef and cabbage sit on the dinner table alongside stuffed grape leaves and tabouleh, all cooked by Rita’s mother, an Irish nurse who met her Lebanese surgeon husband while working at a hospital together. The unconventional yet close-knit family bonds over summers at the beach, wedding line dances, and a shared obsession with the Red Sox. Rita charts herself an ambitious path through Harvard to one of the best newspapers in the country. She is posted in cosmopolitan Beirut and dates a handsome Palestinian would-be activist. But when she is assigned to cover the America-led invasion of Baghdad in 2003, she finds herself unprepared for the war zone. Her lifeline is her interpreter and fixer Nabil al-Jumaili, an equally restless young man whose dreams have been restricted by life in a deteriorating dictatorship, not to mention his own seemingly impossible desires. As the war tears Iraq apart, personal betrayal and the horrors of conflict force Rita and Nabil out of the country and into twisting, uncertain fates. What lies in wait will upend their lives forever, shattering their own notions of what they are entitled to in a grossly unjust world. Epic in scope, by turns satirical and heartbreaking, and speaking sharply to America’s current moment, Correspondents is a whirlwind story about displacement from one’s own roots, the violence America promotes both abroad and at home, and the resilience that allows families to remake themselves and endure even the most shocking upheavals.
©2019 Tim Murphy (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Hidden History of Burma
Summary
Precariously positioned between China and India, Burma's population has suffered dictatorship, natural disaster, and the dark legacies of colonial rule. But when decades of military dictatorship finally ended and internationally beloved Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi emerged from long years of house arrest, hopes soared. World leaders such as Barack Obama ushered in waves of international support. Progress seemed inevitable. As historian, former diplomat, and presidential advisor, Thant Myint-U saw the cracks forming. In this insider's diagnosis of a country at a breaking point, he dissects how a singularly predatory economic system, fast-rising inequality, disintegrating state institutions, the impact of new social media, the rise of China next door, climate change, and deep-seated feelings around race, religion, and national identity all came together to challenge the incipient democracy. Interracial violence soared and a horrific exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fixed international attention. Myint-U explains how and why this happened, and details an unsettling prognosis for the future. Are democracy and an economy that genuinely serves all its people possible in Burma? In clear and urgent prose, Myint-U explores this question - a concern not just for the Burmese but for the rest of the world.
©2020 Thant Myint-U (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Orhan's Inheritance
Summary
When Orhan's brilliant and eccentric grandfather - a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs - is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But his grandfather's will raises more questions than answers. Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger, thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan's grandfather would have willed their home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Left with only Kemal's ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There, over many meetings, he will not only unearth the story that 87-year-old Seda so closely guards, but discover that Seda's past now threatens to unravel his future. It's a story that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family is built. Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan's Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that haunt a family.
©2015 Aline Ohanesian (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Secret Sky
Summary
An eye-opening, heart-rending tale of love, honor and betrayal from NBC foreign news correspodent Atia Abawi. Fatima is a Hazara girl, raised to be obedient and dutiful. Samiullah is a Pashtun boy raised to defend the traditions of his tribe. They were not meant to fall in love. But they do. And the story that follows shows both the beauty and the violence in current-day Afghanistan as Fatima and Samiullah fight their families, their cultures, and the Taliban to stay together. Based on the people Atia Abawi met and the events she covered during her nearly five years in Afghanistan, this stunning novel is a must-listen for anyone who has lived during America's War in Afghanistan.
©2014 Atia Abawi (P)2014 Penguin Audio
The Heartfulness Way
Summary
Heartfulness is an ideal, a spiritual way of living by and from the heart that is inclusive of all ideologies, beliefs, and religions. In this heart-centered book, a student in conversation with his teacher, Kamlesh D. Patel - affectionately known as Daajii, the fourth and current spiritual guide of the century-old Heartfulness tradition - present a unique method of meditation with the power to facilitate an immediate, tangible spiritual experience, irrespective of a person's faith. Our modern, fast-paced world can be an overwhelming place. Every day, we're bombarded with messages telling us that in order to be happy, fulfilled, and worthy, we must be better, do more, and accumulate as much material wealth as possible. But what if there is another way? What if, rather than letting the busyness of life overtake our minds, we learn to be heartful instead? Based on Daaji's own combination of approaches and practices for the modern seeker, Heartfulness is a contemporized version of the ancient Indian practice of Raja Yoga, a tradition that enables the practitioner to realize the higher self within. While many books describe refined states of being, The Heartfulness Way goes further, providing a pragmatic course to experience those states for oneself, which, per the book's guiding principle, is "greater than knowledge."
©2018 Heartfulness Institute (P)2020 Tantor
The Wrong End of the Table
Summary
An Immigrant Love-Hate Story of What it Means to Be American You know that feeling of being at the wrong end of the table? Like you’re at a party but all the good stuff is happening out of earshot (#FOMO)? That’s life - especially for an immigrant. What happens when a shy, awkward Arab girl with a weird name and an unfortunate propensity toward facial hair is uprooted from her comfortable (albeit fascist-regimed) homeland of Iraq and thrust into the cold, alien town of Columbus, Ohio - with its Egg McMuffins, Barbie dolls, and kids playing doctor everywhere you turned? This is Ayser Salman’s story. First comes Emigration, then Naturalization, and finally Assimilation - trying to fit in among her blonde-haired, blue-eyed counterparts, and always feeling left out. On her journey to Americanhood, Ayser witnesses a blowjob at pre-kindergarten daycare, breaks one of her parents’ rules (“Thou shalt not participate as an actor in the school musical where a male cast member rests his head in thy lap”), and other things good Muslim Arab girls are not supposed to do. And, after the 9/11 attacks, she experiences the isolation of being a Muslim in her own country. It takes hours of therapy, fifty-five rounds of electrolysis, and some ill-advised romantic dalliances for Ayser to grow into a modern Arab American woman who embraces her cultural differences. Part memoir and part how-not-to guide, The Wrong End of the Table is everything you wanted to know about Arabs but were afraid to ask, with chapters such as “Tattoos and Other National Security Risks,” “You Can’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Going to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Other Advice from Mom,” and even an open letter to Trump. This is the story of every American outsider on a path to find themselves in a country of beautiful diversity.
©2019 Ayser Salman (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
No Good Men Among the Living
Summary
In a breathtaking chronicle, acclaimed journalist Anand Gopal traces in vivid detail the lives of three Afghans caught in America's war on terror. He follows a Taliban commander who rises from scrawny teenager to leading insurgent, a U.S.-backed warlord who uses the American military to gain personal wealth and power, and a village housewife trapped between the two sides who discovers the devastating cost of neutrality. Through their dramatic stories, Gopal shows that the Afghan war, so often regarded as a hopeless quagmire, could in fact have gone very differently. Top Taliban leaders actually tried to surrender within months of the U.S. invasion, renouncing all political activity and submitting to the new government. Effectively the Taliban ceased to exist--yet the Americans were unwilling to accept such a turnaround. Instead, driven by false intelligence from their allies and an unyielding mandate to fight terrorism, American forces continued to press the conflict, resurrecting the insurgency that persists to this day. With its intimate accounts of life in war-torn Afghanistan, Gopal's thoroughly original reporting lays bare the workings of America's longest war and the truth behind its prolonged agony. A heartbreaking story of mistakes and misdeeds, No Good Men Among the Living challenges our usual perceptions of the Afghan conflict, its victims, and its supposed winners.
©2014 Anand Gopal (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Last Bullet Calls It
Summary
In this award-winning mystery by one of Israel's best-loved authors, a plot of vengeance reveals deeper truths about the complexity of being human. Coupon-clipping police superintendent Jonah Merlin thinks he has an open-and-shut case on his hands after the body of a beautiful woman is found discarded in a run-down building in Tel Aviv. All evidence points to two suspects, but finding them will require unorthodox methods to decode the cryptic words sprayed at every crime scene. As the body count rises, graffiti expert Rai Zitrin and precocious 17-year-old Zoe Navon agree to help Merlin uncover the connection between the killing spree and the words of Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by Nazis 70 years ago. Why would a serial killer quote the famous author's poetic words of unrequited love? The search leads this unlikely trio on a race against the clock to solve the case before the killer has the last laugh...and the last bullet.
©2014 Amir Gutfreund. Translation © 2017 Yardenne Greenspan and Evan Fallenberg. (P)2017 2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Down and Across
Summary
Discover the secret to success in this incisively funny debut, for fans of John Corey Whaley, David Arnold, and Ned Vizzini! Scott Ferdowsi has a track record of quitting. Writing the Great American Novel? Three chapters. His summer internship? One week. His best friends know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives, but Scott can't commit to a breakfast cereal, let alone a passion. With college applications looming, Scott's parents pressure him to get serious about a career path like engineering or medicine. Desperate for help, he sneaks off to Washington, DC, to seek guidance from a famous professor who specializes in grit, the psychology of success. He never expects an adventure to unfold out of what was supposed to be a one-day visit. But that's what Scott gets when he meets Fiora Buchanan, a ballsy college student whose life ambition is to write crossword puzzles. When the bicycle she lends him gets Scott into a high-speed chase, he knows he's in for the ride of his life. Soon, Scott finds himself sneaking into bars, attempting to pick up girls at the National Zoo, and even giving the crossword thing a try - all while opening his eyes to fundamental truths about who he is and who he wants to be.
©2018 Arvin Ahmadi (P)2018 Listening Library
The Believer
Summary
An intricately plotted and brilliantly conceived stand-alone sequel to the international best seller The Swimmer that turns the hottest political topics of our times into a complex, resonant thriller in the vein of John le Carré. Yasmine Ajam has fled her past in the rough Stockholm borough of Bergort, reinventing herself as a trend spotter in New York City. One day she receives a startling message: There are riots erupting on the streets of Stockholm, and they appear to be connected with the disappearance of her brother, Fadi. Following rumors that Fadi was radicalized and died fighting for ISIS in Syria, Yasmine returns to Stockholm to discover what really happened to her brother. There she becomes entangled in a dangerous web of allegiances and violence that stretches far beyond the gangs on her childhood streets. Meanwhile, in London, Klara Walldéen has landed a job at a human rights research institute working on a report to predict the effects of privatizing police forces. When Klara travels to Stockholm to present her findings to European Union policymakers, her laptop is stolen, and one of her colleagues is pushed in front of an oncoming subway train. As her path collides with Yasmine's, Klara begins to realize that she may unwittingly be contributing to the sinister agendas of powerful interests who will stop at nothing to attain their goals. With The Believer, Joakim Zander delivers another novel of suspense that is as sophisticated and timely as it is compelling.
©2017 Joakim Zander (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Virgin
Summary
An international thriller about the search for Mary, the mother of Jesus, from the New York Times best-selling author of the Repairman Jack novels. During the Gulf War in 1991, an ancient scroll is found in Southern Israel. Years later, scientists declare it a fake, but an American nun believes it will lead her to the resting place of the Virgin Mary. What she finds seems to possess miraculous healing powers that attract believers and skeptics from across the globe. She also draws the attention of a mysterious Israeli Shin Bet officer determined to retrieve the remains of the “Mother” at any cost. And that is only the beginning.... Previously published under the pseudonym Mary Elizabeth Murphy.
©1996 by F. Paul Wilson (P)2020 by Blackstone Publishing
This Life or the Next
Summary
From award-winning author Demian Vitanza comes a groundbreaking novel - his first to be translated into English - about one man’s alienation, radicalization, and disillusionment on the violent front lines in Syria.
Tariq Khan is a Pakistani born and raised in Norway. An outsider in his own country - adrift between two worlds divided by class, race, and culture - he’s always been searching for home. Alongside a flock of other streetwise young men, each looking for direction and each easily susceptible, Tariq finds his cause in the Muslim revival.
Idealistic, driven by faith, and empowered with purpose, he’s drawn to radical Islam - his last resort for achieving a sense of belonging, for embracing and being embraced. It’s only when he enlists in the war against Assad that Tariq’s eyes are truly opened. Dispirited with the violence, faced with the consequences of his choices, and increasingly distanced by the brutalities of jihad, Tariq contends with spiritual struggles that are his alone. So are the stories he will tell to make sense of his life.
In this daring and unprecedented work of literary fiction, Demian Vitanza explores the power of memory, the lure of rebellion, the search for meaning amid chaos - and the toll that such a journey can take before finally finding one’s way home.
©2017 Demian Vitanza (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation © 2018 by Tanya Thresher
Lone Wolf in Jerusalem
Summary
When Hitler’s reign of terror begins, David Gabinsky loses everything he holds dear. Driven by vengeance, young David leads a courageous group of Jewish resistance fighters against the Nazi regime. When Germany is defeated, he journeys to Jerusalem looking for a new life. What he finds is a new love - Shoshana, a beautiful but broken Holocaust survivor - and a new war with an unexpected enemy. The British command has its orders: keep the Jews out of Israel. As David single-handedly wreaks havoc on the British, even Shoshana’s love can’t stop him from risking everything - including his life. Lone Wolf in Jerusalem is a suspenseful, action-packed novel, a worthy contribution to Jewish historical fiction. Using adventure, drama, and romance, Diskin has created a captivating story that entertains and educates.
©2018 Ehud Diskin (P)2018 Ehud Diskin
The Lightless Sky
Summary
A gripping, inspiring, and eye-opening memoir of fortitude and survival - of a 12-year-old boy's traumatic flight from Afghanistan to the West - that puts a face to one of the most shocking and devastating humanitarian crises of our time. "To risk my life had to mean something. Otherwise what was it all for?" In 2006, after his father was killed, Gulwali Passarlay was caught between the Taliban, who wanted to recruit him, and the Americans, who wanted to use him. To protect her son, Gulwali's mother sent him away. The search for safety would lead the 12-year-old across eight countries, from the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan through Iran and Europe to Britain. Over the course of 12 harrowing months, Gulwali endured imprisonment, hunger, cruelty, brutality, loneliness, and terror - and nearly drowned crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually granted asylum in England, Gulwali was sent to a good school, learned English, won a place at a top university, and was chosen to help carry the Olympic torch in the 2012 London Games. In The Lightless Sky, Gulwali recalls his remarkable experience and offers a firsthand look at one of the most pressing issues of our time: the modern refugee crisis - the worst displacement of millions of men, women, and children in generations. Few, like Gulwali, make it to a country that offers the chance of freedom and opportunity. A celebration of courage and determination, The Lightless Sky is a poignant account of an exceptional human being who is today an ardent advocate of democracy - and a reminder of our responsibilities to those caught in terrifying and often deadly circumstances beyond their control.
©2016 Gulwali Passarlay (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
The Hakawati
Summary
In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps. Through Osama, we also enter the world of the contemporary Lebanese men and women whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war, conflicted identity, and survival. With The Hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century.
©2008 Rabih Alameddine (P)2014 Audible Inc.