Play Audiobook Sample
The Family Clause Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(0.00) - 0 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
A tender, bruising novel of a family in crisis as a proud patriarch encounters the harsh realities he has inflicted on his children.
“The son did as he was told. All his bloody life, he has done as he has been told. Time to change that, he thinks, grabbing a pen. He doesn’t write that this will be the last time his father stays here. He doesn’t write that he wants to break the father clause. Instead, he writes: Welcome, Dad. Hope you had a good flight.”
A grandfather who lives abroad returns home to visit his adult children. The son is a failure. The daughter is having a baby with the wrong man. Only the grandfather is perfect—at least, according to himself.
But over the course of ten intense days, relationships unfold and painful memories resurface. The grandfather is confronted by his past. The daughter is faced with an impossible choice. The son tries to write himself free. Something has to give. Per a longstanding family agreement, the grandfather has maintained his Swedish residency by coming to stay with his son every six months. Can this clause be renegotiated, or will it chain the family to its past forever?
Through a series of quickly changing perspectives, in The Family Clause Jonas Hassen Khemiri evokes an intimate portrait of a chaotic and perfectly normal family, deeply wounded by the death of a child and the disappearance of a father.
Download and start listening now!
“Khemiri works impressively artfully with the finest tools of the realistic prose…Smart and simple, and with a greatness hidden in the details, in the human patterns that are exposed, The Family Clause is Khemiri’s best novel—and also one of the literary year’s brightest highlights.”
— Expressen (Stockholm)
Quotes
-
“Satisfying…Khemiri succeeds at creating an infectious sense of melancholia as the poisonous patriarch is forced to reckon with the truth. In a slow build of quotidian moments, Khemiri constructs a familiarly flawed universe that lays bare what it means to be human.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Depicting his characters’ perceptions of one another, and themselves, Khemiri points to universal truths: in this and any family, roles change over time, and, with any luck, so do the people in them.”
— Booklist -
“Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Family Clause is a bold and remarkable novel—a marvel of form and imagination that is also miraculously full of heart and compassion.”
— Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our Names -
“The Family Clause vibrates with rueful humor and quiet wisdom. The more you get to know the characters contained within it, the more you see how tremendously large Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s heart must be. His redemptive vision is rare and needed in these dark times.”
— Joshua Furst, author of Revolutionaries -
“A beautiful study of familial need and mess, in which the universal and the particular play footsie with each other. Deft, artful, but above all insightful till it hurts, this is Khemiri’s best yet.”
— Nikita Lalwani, author of The Village -
“It is a rich tale, full of grief and beautiful language. Khemiri continues to be a writer that should not be missed.”
— Borås Tidning (Borås)
Awards
-
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Translated Literature
The Family Clause Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Jonas Hassen Khemiri is a Swedish author who written four acclaimed novels and one collection of short stories, essays, and plays. He is also a celebrated playwright whose work has been performed on stages around the world and who received an Obie Award in 2011 for his off-Broadway play Invasion!.
About the Narrators
Oliver Hembrough is an actor known for his performances in the films The Book of Unwritten Tales, The Joy of 8mls, and Screen Two. Also an accomplished audiobook narrator, his readings include books by Abigail Tarttelin, Sarah Burton, Winston Graham, and Piers Torday.
Oliver Hembrough is an actor known for his performances in the films The Book of Unwritten Tales, The Joy of 8mls, and Screen Two. Also an accomplished audiobook narrator, his readings include books by Abigail Tarttelin, Sarah Burton, Winston Graham, and Piers Torday.