The Darling cover art

The Darling

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The Darling

By: Russell Banks
Narrated by: Mary Beth Hurt
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About this listen

The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison. Hannah's encounter with Taylor in America ultimately triggers a series of events whose momentum catches Hannah's family in its grip and forces her to make a heartrending choice.

Set in Liberia and the United States from 1975 through 1991, The Darling is a political/historical thriller -- reminiscent of Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad -- that explodes the genre, raising serious philosophical questions about terrorism, political violence, and the clash of races and cultures.

Performed by Mary Beth Hurt

©2004 Russell Banks; (P)2004 BBC Audiobooks America, Inc. & HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Thriller & Suspense Heartfelt

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All stars
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A highly intelligent, politically savvy, wonderfully written story about an American woman’s search for justice which takes her on a journey to west Africa and back. A riveting interrogation of what it means to be a woman, to be human and how we relate to our nearest kin, the chimpanzee. I salute Russell Banks and hats off to Mary Beth Hurt for her narration. Read it!!

Fantastic story unputdownable

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