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Songbirds
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, George Georgiou, Art Malik, Lolita Chakrabarti
- Length: 10 hrs
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Publisher's Summary
Her courage to cross oceans.
Her hope for a better life.
Her love for a daughter, above all else.
Not all tragedies make headlines, not every voice is heard.
Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. Now she spends her days caring for someone else's daughter while her own waits for her return, half a world away.
For Petra, it is only natural to hire a domestic worker to keep her house clean and her family fed. Their lives have nothing in common, except the love they feel for their daughters.
Then one day, Nisha vanishes. No one cares about the disappearance of a foreign domestic worker, except Petra and Nisha's secret lover, Yiannis, the only connection to her daughter back in Sri Lanka.
As Petra and Yiannis desperately search for Nisha, they realise how little they knew about her. What they uncover will change them both forever.
Inspired by true stories of love and loss, hope and refuge, this evocative masterpiece from the million-copy best-selling author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy Lefteri, is an illuminating story of the power of the human spirit, and the enduring love of a mother for her child, that will stay with you long after you finish listening.
Critic Reviews
"Will break your heart and open your eyes." (Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz)
"I've never read anything quite like Songbirds—a beautifully crafted novel." (Jodi Picoult, best-selling author of Wish You Were Here)
"This thought-provoking novel of love loss and redemption is thoroughly sublime." (Caroline Montague)
"...broke my heart and kept me turning the pages of her gorgeous novel well into the night." (Alka Joshi, NYT best-selling author of The Henna Artist and The Secret Keeper of Jaipur)
"Christy Lefteri has crafted a beautiful novel, intelligent, thoughtful, and relevant." (Benjamin Zephaniah on The Beekeeper of Aleppo)
"...it's impossible not to be moved by Lefteri's plea for humanity and perhaps inspired too." (Observer, on The Beekeeper of Aleppo)
"Courageous, proactive, haunting." (Heather Morris, on The Beekeeper of Aleppo)
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What listeners say about Songbirds
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Karla
- 21-12-2021
Reading this beautifully presented story makes one want to cry for humanity
I cried for the songbirds, and a practice I’m sure still is still rife. A dad account of some aspects of human nature coupled with some hope for the future. A great read with beautiful phrasing
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- Anonymous User
- 27-05-2022
can't get enough, I am spellbound
I am Petra, learning so much about a world I didn't know existed. Wow what a story. Beautifully written and well told by the narrators. My only disappointment is that I have now completed all of Christy Lefteri's works. Each one has revealed so much to me, thank you
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kirsten Crombie
- 19-10-2023
Just beautiful
A tragic story but written with such exquisite beauty and delicacy. So rich in its layers, metaphors, and detail, and with engaging, complex characters, I devoured it in a weekend.
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- Wendy
- 08-10-2023
Excellent story and narration!
I loved “The Beekeeper of
Aleppo” and when I saw that the author had written another book, I was keen to read it. What a fantastic story! Beautifully written and narrated. What I love about both books is that they also have a deeper meaning and are very powerful. I hope Christy writes many more books because she is extremely talented.
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- Marita
- 21-12-2021
Confronting
Very well written, and exposes some issues that we don't necessarily get exposed to in our safe first world Australia. Not a happy read, but I'm glad I read it and would recommend it. There was a chapter added on to the end of her other book - the Beekeeper of Aleppo. I thought that was a mistake. It put me off reading it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 17-05-2022
A very engaging read
The way the book was written and narrated makes me feel like I now know these characters personally. The story is eye opening and makes you a little more human.
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- NZOumie
- 12-12-2022
Songbirds
What an amazing story, loved it but hate that it is based on true life stories of these women.
Definitely recommend
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- Anonymous User
- 29-02-2024
Beautiful
This is beautifully written and read. The voices are evocative. It is poetic. It captures human frailty and each character has a moment of realisation or transcendence. It is sad. I am glad to have read it (which was the same way I felt about reading the Beekeeper of Aleppo).
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- Jo
- 11-11-2022
A fascinating book, beautifully executed
I bought this audio book a long time before I read it and I must admit that I had forgotten the premise of the story. It was a pleasant surprise when I started it to find that it wasn’t the story I had been expecting at all. What I liked is that underneath the story of the missing maid is an another story that all too often goes untold of the plight of domestic workers who are an invisible part of modern-day slavery. In Songbirds you see that they are subject to prejudice and ignorance from their employers, most are treated with indifference (as though they are somehow sub-human) and some are treated with actual cruelty. This book shines a light on the mistreatment but also very successfully draws out the human stories that lead these women to give up their families and their homes and everything they have ever known to travel across the world to cook, clean and skivvy for wealthy people. This is a really good story and I love the educative elements, subtly delivered but successfully opening up my eyes to something I knew a little about but had no real frame of reference to understand.
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- Anonymous User
- 18-01-2022
Wholesome and Heartbreaking!
Read this after Lefteri's 'Beekeeper of Aleppo' and I am in love with her writing! Definitely one of the best books I've ever read!
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