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Second Person Singular Audiobook by Sayed Kashua, Mitch Ginsburg - translator
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Title: Second Person Singular
Author: Sayed Kashua, Mitch Ginsburg - translator
Narrator: Elijah Alexander
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-06-15
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 27 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
From one of the most important contemporary voices to emerge from the Middle East comes a gripping tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice, which asks whether it is possible to truly reinvent ourselves, to shed our old skin and start anew.
Second Person Singular follows two men, a successful Arab criminal attorney and a social worker-turned-artist, whose lives intersect under the most curious of circumstances. The lawyer has a thriving practice in the Jewish part of Jerusalem, a large house, a Mercedes, speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and is in love with his wife and two young children. In an effort to uphold his image as a sophisticated Israeli Arab, he often makes weekly visits to a local bookstore to pick up popular novels. On one fateful evening, he decides to buy a used copy of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, a book his wife once recommended. To his surprise, inside he finds a small white note, a love letter, in Arabic, in her handwriting. "I waited for you, but you didn't come. I hope everything's all right. I wanted to thank you for last night. It was wonderful. Call me tomorrow?"
Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, the lawyer slips into a blind rage over the presumed betrayal. He first considers murder, revenge, then divorce, but when the initial sting of humiliation and hurt dissipates, he decides to hunt for the book's previous owner - a man named Yonatan, a man who is not easy to track down, whose identity is more complex than imagined, and whose life is more closely aligned with his own than expected. In the process of dredging up old ghosts and secrets, the lawyer tears the string that holds all of their lives together.
A Palestinian who writes in Hebrew, Sayed Kashua defies classification and breaks through cultural barriers. He communicates, with enormous emotional power and a keen sense of the absurd, the particular alienation and the psychic costs of people struggling to straddle two worlds. Second Person Singular is a deliciously complex psychological mystery and a searing dissection of the individuals that comprise a divided society.
Critic Reviews:
"Part comedy of manners, part psychological mystery.... Issues of nationalism, religion, and passing collide with quickly changing social and sexual mores." (Boston Globe)
Members Reviews:
A great read!
A refreshing and entertaining novel from a modern Arab Israeli perspective. An angle not often seen in the the Israeli Arab narrative. A highly recommended work of fiction!
Excellent story, but performance needed work
How did the narrator detract from the book?
The narrator did an excellent job with the Arabic-speaking characters, but didn't even bother to find out how to pronounce the names of the main Hebrew-speaking characters. That's unforgivable. He also didn't differentiate between Israeli and Palestinian accents. It's a demanding book to perform and the narrator should have been better prepared.
Any additional comments?
Keshua is an excellent writer who tells a compelling story.
Brilliant writing
Loved this fascinating story-a very unusual glimpse into the lives of Palestinian Israeli professionals. The narration was good, but, as a Hebrew speaker, I was bothered by mispronunciation of Hebrew words and use of same accents for Hebrew and Arabic speakers.
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Title: Second Person Singular
Author: Sayed Kashua, Mitch Ginsburg - translator
Narrator: Elijah Alexander
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-06-15
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 27 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
From one of the most important contemporary voices to emerge from the Middle East comes a gripping tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice, which asks whether it is possible to truly reinvent ourselves, to shed our old skin and start anew.
Second Person Singular follows two men, a successful Arab criminal attorney and a social worker-turned-artist, whose lives intersect under the most curious of circumstances. The lawyer has a thriving practice in the Jewish part of Jerusalem, a large house, a Mercedes, speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and is in love with his wife and two young children. In an effort to uphold his image as a sophisticated Israeli Arab, he often makes weekly visits to a local bookstore to pick up popular novels. On one fateful evening, he decides to buy a used copy of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, a book his wife once recommended. To his surprise, inside he finds a small white note, a love letter, in Arabic, in her handwriting. "I waited for you, but you didn't come. I hope everything's all right. I wanted to thank you for last night. It was wonderful. Call me tomorrow?"
Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, the lawyer slips into a blind rage over the presumed betrayal. He first considers murder, revenge, then divorce, but when the initial sting of humiliation and hurt dissipates, he decides to hunt for the book's previous owner - a man named Yonatan, a man who is not easy to track down, whose identity is more complex than imagined, and whose life is more closely aligned with his own than expected. In the process of dredging up old ghosts and secrets, the lawyer tears the string that holds all of their lives together.
A Palestinian who writes in Hebrew, Sayed Kashua defies classification and breaks through cultural barriers. He communicates, with enormous emotional power and a keen sense of the absurd, the particular alienation and the psychic costs of people struggling to straddle two worlds. Second Person Singular is a deliciously complex psychological mystery and a searing dissection of the individuals that comprise a divided society.
Critic Reviews:
"Part comedy of manners, part psychological mystery.... Issues of nationalism, religion, and passing collide with quickly changing social and sexual mores." (Boston Globe)
Members Reviews:
A great read!
A refreshing and entertaining novel from a modern Arab Israeli perspective. An angle not often seen in the the Israeli Arab narrative. A highly recommended work of fiction!
Excellent story, but performance needed work
How did the narrator detract from the book?
The narrator did an excellent job with the Arabic-speaking characters, but didn't even bother to find out how to pronounce the names of the main Hebrew-speaking characters. That's unforgivable. He also didn't differentiate between Israeli and Palestinian accents. It's a demanding book to perform and the narrator should have been better prepared.
Any additional comments?
Keshua is an excellent writer who tells a compelling story.
Brilliant writing
Loved this fascinating story-a very unusual glimpse into the lives of Palestinian Israeli professionals. The narration was good, but, as a Hebrew speaker, I was bothered by mispronunciation of Hebrew words and use of same accents for Hebrew and Arabic speakers.