The Refugee Ocean
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The Refugee Ocean
Narrated by:
Ali Andre Ali, Suehyla El-Attar Young, Jackie Sanders
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Ali Andre Ali
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Suehyla El-Attar Young
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Jackie Sanders
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By:
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Pauls Toutonghi
About this listen
Born in Beirut in 1922, Marguerite Toutounghi lives a life of loss and sacrifice. She dreams of traveling Europe and studying music at the Conservatoire de Paris but her family—and her society—hold her back. When she meets the son of a Cuban tobacco farmer at a formal dance, love transforms her life. Together with him, she flees across the Atlantic Ocean. She’s hoping for a new beginning, she finds revolution and chaos.
Over fifty years later, Naïm Rahil is a teenage refugee from Aleppo, Syria. A former piano prodigy who struggles to thrive in America—and who has lost part of his hand in the war—he dreams of a simple normal life.
Moving from Aleppo on the brink of civil war, to Lebanon in the late 1940s, to Havana during the Cuban Revolution, to the suburbs of Washington, DC, The Refugee Ocean “is an exquisite…poignant, and layered novel” (Eleanor Shearer, author of River Sing Me Home) that grapples with what it means to be an immigrant, shows how wounds can heal, and highlights the role of music and art in the resilience of the human spirit.
Critic Reviews
"Three extraordinary narrators guide listeners through two timelines, three lives, and multiple locations involving the immigrant experience. Marguerite, intelligently portrayed by Suehyla El-Attar Young, is musically gifted and composes brilliant sonatas even as civil war rages in Beirut in 1922. Ali Andre Ali is terrific while recounting a story set 50 years later involving Naim, a young Syrian and gifted pianist who is maimed in an Aleppo bombing. Tying the two stories together is wise, witty American Annabel, who is wonderfully portrayed by Jackie Sanders. From Lebanon to Cuba, from Syria to America, the sensitive prose offers painful insights into war and its effects on those displaced. But it’s the top-notch performances and music that will resonate with listeners."
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