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Title details for Girl by Edna O'Brien - Available

Girl

A Novel

by Edna O'Brien
Sheila Atim
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

"Narrator Sheila Atim sets a sensitive yet emphatic tone for this harrowing story of violence, loss, and survival...Listeners will be enveloped in this emotional listening experience." — AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

This program is read by Laurence Olivier Award-winning actress, Sheila Atim.
Girl, Edna O'Brien's hotly anticipated novel, envisages the lives of the Boko Haram girls in a masterpiece of violence and tenderness.
I was a girl once, but not anymore.
So begins Girl, Edna O'Brien's harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood. From one of the century's greatest living authors, Girl is an unforgettable story of one victim's astonishing survival, and her unflinching faith in the redemption of the human heart.
Praise for Girl:
"Edna O'Brien tells this story with such compassion and understanding that the very disturbing events she relates are uplifting—and unforgettable. An utterly unique achievement." — Ian McKellen
"By an extraordinary act of the imagination we are transported into the inner world of a girl who, after brutal abuse as a slave to Nigerian jihadis, escapes and with dogged persistence begins to rebuild her shattered life. Girl is a courageous book about a courageous spirit." — J. M. Coetzee

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 15, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781250254450
      • File size: 164491 KB
      • Duration: 05:42:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 8, 2019
      The harrowing story of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 provides the foundation of this emotional novel from O’Brien (The Little Red Chairs). Maryam, who narrates in a taut first person, is brutally ripped from her school in Nigeria, along with her classmates, and taken to a detention camp, where they are treated like cattle. Maryam has a child with a reckless fellow prisoner named Mahoud. Later, the chaos from an air attack allows her and her daughter to escape along with her friend Buki, but this is far from the end of her troubles. Days of starvation and exhaustion end when they take refuge in a remote outpost near a village, where they lay low for awhile before being embraced and nurtured by the women who live there. But when it’s learned that the villagers are “hiding a militant’s wife and child,” they are shunned and Maryam is forced to leave, splitting up from Buki. She goes to a military post, where she is mistaken for a suicide bomber and ends up being interviewed by authorities, which goes horribly wrong. O’Brien captures the intensity and urgency of Maryam’s plight with measured, evocative prose that often reads like poetry. She succeeds in putting a personal face on an international tragedy.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Sheila Atim sets a sensitive yet emphatic tone for this harrowing story of violence, loss, and survival. She becomes Maryam, a Nigerian girl who is abducted by the infamous militant Boko Haram. Atim brings listeners to tears as we hear the many violations Maryam must endure--and then makes us hang on breathlessly to see whether her incredible bid for freedom will succeed. Listeners will be enveloped in this emotional listening experience as Atim makes us feel the ultimate betrayal of Maryam's failed reunion with her family, who don't know what to do with a rape survivor who has given birth to child of her abductor. This is a powerful volume that may best be listened to in intervals. M.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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