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De Niro's Game

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De Niro's Game

By: Rawi Hage
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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About this listen

 Bassam and George are childhood best friends who have grown up on the Christian side of war-torn Beirut.

Now on the verge of adulthood, they must choose their futures: to remain in the exhausted, corrupt city of their birth, or to go into exile abroad, cut off from the only existence they have known.

Bassam chooses one path - obsessed with leaving Beirut, he embarks on a series of petty crimes to fund his escape to the West.

Meanwhile, George amasses power in the underworld of the city, embracing a life of military service, organised crime, killing, and drugs.

Their two paths inevitably collide, with explosive consequences. De Niro's Game is a devastating, timely portrait of two young men and an entire city formed and deformed by war.

©2006 Rawi Hage (P)2009 WF Howes Ltd Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Middle East

Critic reviews

"Both terse and lyrical, Hage's narrative is a wonder, alternately referencing modern American action heroes and ancient Arabic imagery. The blend of the two is as startling as it is beautiful." (Booklist)
"Hage's energetic prose matches the brutality depicted in the novel without overstating the narrative's tragic arc - an impressive first outing for Hage." (Publishers Weekly)
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Most relevant
I was really looking forward to this book, the reviews for the print edition were good and I am interested in the location and political setting. But I gave up after ten minutes - the narration just doesn't work. Could be a great narrator for a traditional British novel but he doesn't pull of Beirut. Why not get someone who sounds a bit more 'street'? Or better still, someone of Arab descent?
I will listen a lot more carefully to samples in future.
I had to put a rating for the storyline to be able to write this review but never listened to it again. Might buy the book instead.

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