Listen free for 30 days
-
Burger's Daughter
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
People who bought this also bought...
-
Long Walk to Freedom
- The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
- By: Nelson Mandela
- Narrated by: Danny Glover
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling, and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience, and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.
-
-
Long walk to freedom
- By Jackie on 27-06-07
-
Disgrace
- By: J M Coetzee
- Narrated by: Jack Klaff
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours, he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding.
-
-
A sombre tale of choices
- By Suswati on 07-07-17
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.
-
-
In my living memory
- By julie on 19-10-17
-
The Remains of the Day
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Dominic West
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside – and into his past.
-
-
Nostalgia for a time that has so much to teach us
- By David Rogers on 20-07-15
-
Waiting for the Barbarians
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.
-
Girl, Woman, Other
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Anna-Maria Nabirye
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope....
-
-
Good story but distracting narration
- By Booklover on 21-11-19
-
Long Walk to Freedom
- The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
- By: Nelson Mandela
- Narrated by: Danny Glover
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling, and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience, and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.
-
-
Long walk to freedom
- By Jackie on 27-06-07
-
Disgrace
- By: J M Coetzee
- Narrated by: Jack Klaff
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours, he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding.
-
-
A sombre tale of choices
- By Suswati on 07-07-17
-
Half of a Yellow Sun
- By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Narrated by: Zainab Jah
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.
-
-
In my living memory
- By julie on 19-10-17
-
The Remains of the Day
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Dominic West
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside – and into his past.
-
-
Nostalgia for a time that has so much to teach us
- By David Rogers on 20-07-15
-
Waiting for the Barbarians
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.
-
Girl, Woman, Other
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Anna-Maria Nabirye
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope....
-
-
Good story but distracting narration
- By Booklover on 21-11-19
-
The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
Just not as dynamic as the original release.
- By C. Fletcher on 04-01-20
-
Howards End
- By: E M Forster
- Narrated by: Edward Petherbridge
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Howards End is the story of the liberal Schlegel sisters and their struggle to come to terms with social class and their German heritage in Edwardian England. Their lives are intertwined with those of the wealthy and pragmatic Wilcox family and their country house, Howards End, as well as the lower-middle-class Basts. When Helen Schlegel and Paul Wilcox's brief romance ends badly the Schlegels hope to never see the Wilcoxes again.
-
-
A very Edwardian reading!
- By sora on 23-06-14
-
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maya Angelou's six volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement, and celebration. In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother's lover.
-
-
My favourite book
- By S Morris on 13-09-16
-
Animal Farm
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Animal Farm is George Orwell's great socio-political allegory set in a farmyard where the animals decide to seize the farmer's land and create a co-operative that reaps the benefits of their combined labours. However, as with all great political plans, some animals see a bigger share of the rewards than others and the animals start to question their supposed utopia.
-
-
Brilliant classic, superbly read by Simon Callow
- By Anthony on 15-06-14
-
A Gentleman in Moscow
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Soon to be a major TV series starring Kenneth Branagh. On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all?
-
-
Spoiled by reader
- By barjil on 21-02-19
-
Gender Trouble
- Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
- By: Judith Butler
- Narrated by: Emily Beresford
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past 50 years, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, "essential" notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category "woman" and continues in this vein with examinations of "the masculine" and "the feminine." Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality.
-
-
An absolute classic let down in its performance
- By cloudspotter on 04-01-19
-
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
- By: Reni Eddo-Lodge
- Narrated by: Reni Eddo-Lodge
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In February 2014, Reni Eddo-Lodge posted an impassioned argument on her blog about her deep-seated frustration with the way discussions of race and racism in Britain were constantly being shut down by those who weren't affected by it. She gave the post the title 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race'. Her sharp, fiercely intelligent words hit a nerve, and the post went viral, spawning a huge number of comments from people desperate to speak up about their own similar experiences.
-
-
cherry picked science to fulfill a narrative
- By Dan norman on 03-04-20
-
Cry, the Beloved Country
- By: Alan Paton
- Narrated by: Michael York
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beautifully wrought with high poetic compassion, Cry, the Beloved Country is more than just a story, it is a profound experience of the human spirit. And beyond the intense and insoluble personal tragedy, it is the story of the beautiful and tragic land of South Africa, its landscape, its people, its bitter racial ferment and unrest.
-
-
South African classic; read by non South African
- By Anthony on 03-01-15
-
Flights
- By: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flights, a novel about travel in the 21st century and human anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuk’s most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion and migration. With her signature grace and insight, Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind.
-
-
Pointless
- By Chris on 05-07-20
-
Outline
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kristin Scott Thomas
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss.
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.
-
-
Miserable.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-01-20
-
The Salt Path
- By: Raynor Winn
- Narrated by: Raynor Winn
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset via Devon and Cornwall. They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky.
-
-
amazingly inspirational!
- By alex skinner on 26-12-19
Summary
Critic reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about Burger's Daughter
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 25-05-17
Boring, clueless pronunciation, but prose is Nobel
What would have made Burger's Daughter better?
It's no longer a sound quality issue. It's entirely a narrator issue. The book is incredibly tiresome but as one reviewer put it, it is certainly "novelistically faultless." The historical part was at times interesting, but boy do you have to slog through endless descriptions of flowers, doors, and digressions that do nothing but bore.
What didn’t you like about Nadia May’s performance?
I'm South African and I can confirm that she didn't check ANY pronunciations. Her Afrikaans, Xhosa, even Portuguese (Samora Machel, pronounced Mackell) were all wrong. I can almost not think of a single word she got right: rondavel, Motlanthe, Mbeki, Knysna, Cloete, you name it. Absolutely unforgivable. If you have to have a non-South African narrator (and I don't see why you'd have to) narrate one SA's finest writers then at very least check pronunciations. Her SA accent is pretty terrible too, but non-SA listeners may not be as bothered. I've listened to May narrate Origins of Totalitarianism and she's a good narrator. Not sure why she's debased herself in this way.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- A M
- 28-05-04
No wonder she won the Nobel Prize for literature!
Its a pleasure to read Nadine Gordimer's prose. The story concerns the daughter of revolutionaries in South Africa--growing up as a member of the underground with legendary parents who were repeatedly imprisoned. She is then left to assume her individual identity, juggling the many people captivated by their images of her, expectations that she will carry on her parents' legacy, and her own principles and need for individuality. The book captures the beauty and brutality of South Africa, a land with so many contradictions--racists and heroes, open wild spaces and strictly imposed barriers, and of course black and white. Nadia May captures South African accents wonderfully.
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- TWZ
- 05-10-10
Please, improve the sound quality
It is an interesting book, but I could not listen to it. A terrible recording.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- Elisa
- 11-04-06
Terrible audio
I really, really wanted to hear this audiobook, but the quality of the recording was so bad I had to give up. I hope that Audible finds a new version, as this is a book that deserves to be heard...
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Jeremy
- 28-12-14
A challenging book to listen to
Would you try another book from Nadine Gordimer and/or Nadia May?
I have tremendous respect for Gordimer and would say that this book is excellently written. It is however, filled with long political conversations and lots of descriptive language. Not the best choice for an audio book.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Burger's Daughter?
The portrait of South Africa was fascinating to me. (I'm married to a South African.) The novel gives a lot of historical insight.
How could the performance have been better?
The recording seems old and the audio quality is not great. Sometimes the recording repeats a few sentences, as if clips were badly spliced. Disappointing
Was Burger's Daughter worth the listening time?
Eh ... I can't say I really enjoyed listening to it, but I am glad to have the novel in my memory. Kind of like a school assignment that you look back on fondly.
Any additional comments?
I wish I could recommend this book because I do have tremendous respect for Nadine Gordimer. She crafts incredible sentences and the novel is full of heart. But it isn't a great audiobook.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Ohad
- 11-03-12
Terrible sound quality
I can't say anything about the book itself. The sound is so bad that I gave it up after a few minutes.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Mitzi
- 29-08-20
I just didn't make it to the end
I didn't understand a thing. It is possible that this novel is not suited for Audible reading or that the reader did an awful job of interpreting it: I don't know, since I do not own the hardcopy of this book. But as is, in this Audible version, I found it impossible to follow, with a poorly organized plot, and overall boring to tears. I stopped about 3 hours into it. The reader is not the greatest, unfortunately. Her speech style, of weaving one word into the other breathlessly, combined with an exceedingly old-style English (like my neighbour, dear old... old Mrs. Walker, in the 70s) is quite unpleasant. I wouldn't recommend this Audible (although, the novel itself may be worth reading in person--I'm not sure).
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Anonymous User
- 25-04-20
Great book, but doesn't lend well to narration
I loved this book's content, but had trouble persisting through the audio performance. Part of the issue is the structure of the book since it jumps perspective style regularly and can ramble without pronouns for frustratingly long. As a result, tracking events by purely listening is difficult. Beyond this hindrance, the audio performance simply is not good. Despite everything started above, this book is still worth a listen for its own sake. Although, if you can find a physical copy that's probably a better option.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- TiffanyD
- 22-04-19
Left me cold
I know it's a modern classic and it's definitely about a fascinating topic but the book, while competently narrated, left me cold. The main character is so divorced from her own life and history that it was hard for me to get a sense of her. There were some lovely bits (a scene where a life or death discussion was briefly interrupted with the offer of after dinner cordials deftly illustrated the divide between the theoretical and the practical, the privileged and the non privileged) but there were also some long pages of speechifying that I could have done without.