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The Book of Aron: A novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The acclaimed National Book Award finalist—“one of the United States’ finest writers,” according to Joshua Ferris, “full of wit, humanity, and fearless curiosity”—now gives us a novel that will join the short list of classics about children caught up in the Holocaust. Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution. He and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and trade contraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not to mention the Gestapo. When his family is finally stripped away from him, Aron is rescued by Janusz Korczak, a doctor renowned throughout prewar Europe as an advocate of children’s rights who, once the Nazis swept in, was put in charge of the Warsaw orphanage. Treblinka awaits them all, but does Aron manage to escape—as his mentor suspected he could—to spread word about the atrocities? Jim Shepard has masterfully made this child’s-eye view of the darkest history mesmerizing, sometimes comic despite all odds, truly heartbreaking, and even inspiring. Anyone who hears Aron’s voice will remember it forever.
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“This remarkable audiobook unfolds movingly as delivered in a calm, measured voice by narrator Michael Goldstrom…The novel reveals the horrors of war through the eyes of the title character, Aron, whom Goldstrom voices perfectly. His performance has a quiet quality that suits the subject matter—after all, nothing could FULLY re-create these powerful scenes in the listener’s mind. Through his measured, reserved tone, Goldstrom allows us to fill in the blanks, and the effect is ideal. As listeners’ imaginations take over, they become part of Aron’s band of child smugglers and petty thieves who struggle to keep their families alive in the Warsaw ghettos. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“Not for the fainthearted…Shepard has written a Holocaust novel that stands with the most powerful writing on that terrible subject.”
— John Irving, New York Times bestselling author -
“Heartbreaking, shattering, charming, and brilliant.”
— Roddy Doyle, New York Times bestselling author -
“Who would have guessed that a writer known for his irreverent short stories could devlier an essential Holocaust novel? Understated and shattering.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine -
“Beautiful, harrowing…The words fall like thunderclaps.”
— More -
“Shepard’s novel joins a heartbreaking group including The Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars, and other child’s-eye perspectives on the Holocaust.”
— Time -
“Haunting…[with] a matter-of-fact voice that can describe a horrific evening with chilling precision.”
— New Yorker -
“It is the relationship between Aron and Korczak that sits at the heart of the novel [and] it is in the orbit of this entirely good man that Aron’s scarred heart begins to heal and expand.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“A work of art [and] moving masterpiece…Shepard turns hell into a testament of love and sacrifice.”
— Guardian (London) -
“Understated and devastating…an exhaustively researched, pitch-perfect novel exploring the moral ambiguities of survival…[in which] ordinary people reveal dimensions that are extraordinarily cruel or kind.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred starred) -
“This moving novel bears witness to human complexity with an uncompromising compassion. It is a testament not only to Janusz Korczak and the children in the Warsaw Ghetto but to every child abandoned in war. History must open our hearts to the present, and this is Jim Shepard’s powerful achievement.”
— Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces -
“Heartbreaking but never sentimental, comic but never unserious, terrifying but always engrossing, The Book of Aron brings us face to face with the unimaginable, actual truth.”
— Daniel Handler, author of We Are Pirates
Awards
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An Oprah Pick for 10 Titles to Pick Up Now
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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Shortlisted for the 2015 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
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Shortlisted for the 2016 Carnegie Medal for Literature
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A 2015 Top 10 Washington Post Book World Best Book of the Year
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A BuzzFeed Books Pick for Best Fiction of 2015
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About Jim Shepard
Jim Shepard us the author of more than six novels and four collections of stories. His work has been published in the New Yorker, Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Zoetrope, Playboy, and Vice, among other periodicals. He teaches at Williams College.
About Michael Goldstrom
Michael Goldstrom is a Juilliard-trained actor and comedian. He has appeared on Comedy Central, HBO, A&E, NBC, and ABC, as well as on and off Broadway. His audiobook narrations have earned several Earphones Awards.