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The Parisian

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The Parisian

By: Isabella Hammad
Narrated by: Fiona Button
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Summary

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Parisian written by Isabella Hammad, read by Fiona Button.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2020*

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD FICTION AWARD 2019*

As the First World War shatters families, destroys friendships and kills lovers, a young Palestinian dreamer sets out to find himself.

Midhat Kamal picks his way across a fractured world, from the shifting politics of the Middle East to the dinner tables of Montpellier and a newly tumultuous Paris. He discovers that everything is fragile: love turns to loss, friends become enemies and everyone is looking for a place to belong.

Isabella Hammad delicately unpicks the tangled politics and personal tragedies of a turbulent era – the Palestinian struggle for independence, the strife of the early twentieth century and the looming shadow of the Second World War. An intensely human story amidst a global conflict, The Parisian is historical fiction with a remarkable contemporary voice.

©2019 Isabella Hammad (P)2019 Random House Audiobooks 20th Century Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Fiction Romance Middle East Middle Ages
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Critic reviews

"The Parisian is a sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful. Isabella Hammad is an enormous talent and her book is a wonder." (Zadie Smith)
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This novel made me realise how little I knew about the history of the region. Beautifully written.

Arab history

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I enjoyed every minute of it each of the three times i listened to this production of this excellent book.

Excellent story telling and production

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This story is beautiful and compelling, and the performance is lovely …until any Arabic is spoken! Arabic is an actual language, spoken by actual people. This performance reduces it to utter gibberish, a jumble of squashed syllables. The narrator mispronounces letters and words and gets the intonation all wrong. For example, routine greetings are turned into slightly hysterical wails because they include the word Allah (God). It’s quite ridiculous. It’s a shame because the pronunciation significantly changes the mood and intention of the passages that contain Arabic (and there are quite a few of them).

The Arabic sounds like gibberish!

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I really want to like this novel but I just can’t get inside it. The reading doesn’t help - very flat, only two voices for characters and very similar intonation, dodgy Arabic pronunciation. Occasionally things pick up when the politics/history starts happening, but I find this always peters out in the characters’ lack of personality. [SPOILER: not even the gun smuggling nuns are exciting!]

Didn’t move me

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I adore this novel, which is so accomplished. Absolutely superb characterisation and settings, packed with history, doesn’t pander to the English reader. The Arabic pronunciation is… fragile.

One of my favourite writers

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