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The Land and Its People

Essays

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The Land and Its People

By: David Sedaris
Narrated by: David Sedaris
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About this listen

In The Land and Its People, his collection following Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a lifelong friend.

He tries on the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh’s hip-replacement surgery, and both succeeds and fails. He buys his sister a cape and discusses his brother with a jaded Duolingo bot. He walks dozens of miles with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. Ever adding to his list of “Countries I Have Been To,” he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest’s cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo.

There is sadness here—scrolling through his address book, he realizes how many dear friends are now deceased—but also delight: he revels in authors’ biographies, the malapropism that becomes a decades-long inside joke, and pair of well-made cotton underpants. He is bitten by a dog. A train passenger vomits in his face. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn’t. Look how hard it is to be alive!

Throughout these essays—at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound—Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity this fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.
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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.