Beloved cover art

Beloved

Pulitzer Prize Winner

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Beloved

By: Toni Morrison, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers - introduction
Narrated by: Toni Morrison, Karen Murray
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About this listen

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This "powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinching look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. With an afterword by the author and a new introduction by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.

“A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

“Dazzling. . . . Magical. . . . An extraordinary work.” —The New York Times©1987 Toni Morrison; (P)1998 Random House, Inc.
African American Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Haunted Heartfelt Inspiring Tear-jerking Thought-Provoking

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Critic reviews

“A masterwork. . . . Wonderful. . . . I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

“A triumph.” —Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Morrison’s finest work. . . . [It] sets her apart [and] displays her prodigious talent.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Dazzling. . . . Magical. . . . An extraordinary work.” —The New York Times

“A masterpiece. . . . Magnificent. . . . Astounding. . . . Overpowering.” —Newsweek

“Brilliant. . . . Resonates from past to present.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“A brutally powerful, mesmerizing story. . . . Read it and tremble.” —People

“Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature.” —New York Review of Books

“A work of genuine force. . . . Beautifully written.” —The Washington Post

“There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you.” —The New Yorker

“A magnificent heroine . . . a glorious book.” —The Baltimore Sun

“Superb. . . . A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history. . . . Exquisitely told.” —Cosmopolitan

“Magical . . . rich, provocative, extremely satisfying.” —Milwaukee Journal

“Beautifully written. . . . Powerful. . . . Toni Morrison has become one of America’s finest novelists.” —The Plain Dealer

“Stunning. . . A lasting achievement.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Written with a force rarely seen in contemporary fiction. . . . One feels deep admiration.” —USA Today

“Compelling . . . . Morrison shakes that brilliant kaleidoscope of hers again, and the story of pain, endurance, poetry and power she is born to tell comes right out.” —The Village Voice

“A book worth many rereadings.” —Glamour

“In her most probing novel, Toni Morrison has demonstrated once again the stunning powers that place her in the first ranks of our living novelists.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Heart-wrenching . . . mesmerizing.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Shattering emotional power and impact.” —New York Daily News

“A rich, mythical novel . . . a triumph.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Powerful . . . voluptuous.” —New York
All stars
Most relevant
Years ago, I read The Bluest Eye, but I never got around to reading Beloved until now. It's not an easy read but Toni Morrison is as wonderful a reader and storyteller as you would expect.
The book broke my heart, I honestly think it's the most powerful I've ever read and I don't understand why I was given To Kill A Mockingbird to study TWICE at school, but never this. Beloved is a beautiful and important book, and puts Morrison up there with George Eliot, Dickens, and Sebald, as far as I'm concerned. It's incredible.

Important

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Absolutely love this audio book. Listening to it being read by the author, for me, changes the whole tone of the story.

beautiful and brilliant

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Excellent book worth the listen if like myself you are always on the go. I listened with interest makesure you have good headphones

One to remember

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I don't often give up on a book but this one sadly ticked that box. It's the author, so admittedly I'm a little off to criticise, but I'm afraid I have to.

The narration takes a tone akin to a parent telling a gentle story in order to persuade a small child to sleep and I found it a real task to stop myself from losing concentration. She also has a habit of getting partway through a sentence and pausing then having to rush to add the rest of the sentence, it's distracting.

Mainly though it's the overly gentle monotone whispering as if it wants me to sleep that lost me. The book was a recommendation from someone who had read the physical version but this one I simply couldn't get through at all. I managed a little over an hour but would struggle to tell you much detail of what I heard.

Narration made it an impossible read, gave up

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Ghost story, troubled mother-daughter relationship, and don't let the references to the horrors of slavery put you off. man up, women up. You'd read a book about the horrors of war wouldn't you?

Wonderful to hear Toni Morrison reading this

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