
Brother
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $18.90
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Joseph Pierre
-
By:
-
David Chariandy
About this listen
The long-awaited second novel from David Chariandy, whose debut, Soucouyant, was nominated for nearly every major literary prize in Canada and published internationally.
An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991.
With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared, and their mother works double, sometimes triple, shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home.
Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry - teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always, Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves.
Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
With devastating emotional force, David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.
©2017 David Chariandy (P)2017 Penguin Random House CanadaListeners also enjoyed...
-
American Dirt
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
-
-
Completely unrealistic
- By Marlene L Marquez on 02-12-20
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
-
-
Beautifully written, but painful.
- By NB on 06-10-19
By: Ocean Vuong
-
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
- A Novel
- By: Christy Lefteri
- Narrated by: Art Malik
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo - until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight.
-
-
Just TOO AWFULLY DEPRESSING WITHOUT ending with any hope
- By Abby Mamacos on 07-28-20
By: Christy Lefteri
-
The Sentence
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting.
-
-
Addictive and surprising
- By Amazon Customer on 11-25-21
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Long Bright River
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Liz Moore
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit - and her sister - before it's too late.
-
-
Narration was good
- By Kelli avid listener on 01-14-20
By: Liz Moore
-
Disappearing Earth
- A novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother.
-
-
The setting is completely unique!
- By Kelly on 06-25-19
By: Julia Phillips
-
American Dirt
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
-
-
Completely unrealistic
- By Marlene L Marquez on 02-12-20
By: Jeanine Cummins
-
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
-
-
Beautifully written, but painful.
- By NB on 06-10-19
By: Ocean Vuong
-
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
- A Novel
- By: Christy Lefteri
- Narrated by: Art Malik
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo - until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight.
-
-
Just TOO AWFULLY DEPRESSING WITHOUT ending with any hope
- By Abby Mamacos on 07-28-20
By: Christy Lefteri
-
The Sentence
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting.
-
-
Addictive and surprising
- By Amazon Customer on 11-25-21
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Long Bright River
- A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
- By: Liz Moore
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit - and her sister - before it's too late.
-
-
Narration was good
- By Kelli avid listener on 01-14-20
By: Liz Moore
-
Disappearing Earth
- A novel
- By: Julia Phillips
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls - sisters, eight and 11 - go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother.
-
-
The setting is completely unique!
- By Kelly on 06-25-19
By: Julia Phillips
-
A Place Called Home
- A Memoir
- By: David Ambroz
- Narrated by: David Ambroz
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There are millions of homeless children in America today and in A Place Called Home, award-winning child welfare advocate David Ambroz writes about growing up homeless in New York for eleven years and his subsequent years in foster care, offering a window into what so many kids living in poverty experience every day.
-
-
Very heart wrenching read, BUT
- By Everest Mom on 01-14-23
By: David Ambroz
-
No Gods, No Monsters
- A Novel (The Convergence Saga, Book 1)
- By: Cadwell Turnbull
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence.
-
-
amazing!
- By Gemma stone on 09-10-21
By: Cadwell Turnbull
-
Seed
- By: Ania Ahlborn
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With nothing but the clothes on his back - and something horrific snapping at his heels - Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever. Now, years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead. Surviving a violent car crash seems like a miracle for Jack’s family, but Jack knows there’s nothing divine about it.
-
-
THE DIRTY SOUTH
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 12-28-16
By: Ania Ahlborn
-
Signal Fires
- A Novel
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Dani Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret—one which will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own.. Spanning fifty kaleidoscopic years, on a street—and in a galaxy—where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined. Urgent and compassionate, Signal Fires is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers.
-
-
Depressing, poorly read
- By Arden Mahaffey on 11-02-22
By: Dani Shapiro
-
The Jungle Book
- Parts I & II
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Benjamin May
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Jungle Book is a series of fables written about wild animals and a boy named Mowgli. Most of the short stories in the collection are about Mowgli, who wanders off into the Indian jungle while being pursued by a vicious tiger, Shere Khan. Shere Khan is lame and cannot catch Mowgli on his first attempt.
-
-
Jungle Books 1 & 2
- By RetiredInSC on 12-31-17
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Beauty of Your Face
- A Novel
- By: Sahar Mustafah
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Michael Braun
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A uniquely American story told in powerful, evocative prose, The Beauty of Your Face navigates a country growing ever more divided. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter - radicalized by the online alt-right - attacks the school.
-
-
wonderful read!
- By Tana Beverwyk-Abouda on 08-04-22
By: Sahar Mustafah
-
Patsy
- A Novel
- By: Nicole Dennis-Benn
- Narrated by: Sharon Gordon
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it comes after years of yearning to leave Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised. More than anything, Patsy wishes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, whose letters arrive from New York steeped in the promise of a happier life and the possible rekindling of their young love. But Patsy's plans don't include her overzealous, evangelical mother - or even her five-year-old daughter, Tru. Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to choose herself first.
-
-
If heroes are required... Avoid!
- By Averil on 10-19-19
-
Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion
- A Novel
- By: Bushra Rehman
- Narrated by: Bushra Rehman
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. When a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia’s heart is broken. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close-knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing miniskirts, and cutting school to explore the city.
-
-
Lovely story
- By Carol on 04-19-24
By: Bushra Rehman
-
The Arsonists' City
- By: Hala Alyan
- Narrated by: Leila Buck
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nasr family is spread across the globe - Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they’ve always had their ancestral home in Beirut - a constant touchstone - and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house.
-
-
amazing
- By Kindle Customer on 05-07-22
By: Hala Alyan
-
Red X
- By: David Demchuk
- Narrated by: Salvatore Antonio, David Demchuk
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Men are disappearing from Toronto's gay village. They're the marginalized, the vulnerable. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled friends. Against the shifting backdrop of homophobia throughout the decades, from the HIV/AIDS crisis and riots against raids to gentrification and police brutality, the survivors face inaction from the law and disinterest from society at large. But as the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible.
-
-
Lush Horror Story
- By Jason on 09-15-21
By: David Demchuk
-
The Prettiest Star
- By: Carter Sickels
- Narrated by: Tiffany Morgan, Charlie Thurston
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 18, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape.
-
-
important to remember
- By Mary M Dugan on 10-02-20
By: Carter Sickels
-
Of Women and Salt
- A Novel
- By: Gabriela Garcia
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Gabriela Garcia
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.
-
-
Bored
- By Kay on 04-05-21
By: Gabriela Garcia
Critic reviews
“Brother is a bittersweet homage to the danger of hope and the awkwardness of grief.” (Catherine Hernandez, Quill & Quire)
“Chariandy's second novel, Brother...is a supremely moving and exquisitely crafted portrait of his hometown.... It is a celebration and a reckoning, a study of community and of family and of the ways each relies on the other, and of the power of art to build and the ability of those in power to destroy. It is also an act of literary cartography, an attempt to place Scarborough on the CanLit map, once and for all, and an effort by Chariandy to show ‘the importance of knowing that your world - in its beauty, in its ugliness, in its heroism, in its cowardice - [can] also be worthy of representation.’” (Mark Medley, Globe and Mail)
“[Brother is] a beautiful piece of literature - a coming of age story, a meditation on family, a novel of place - but that place is the same much maligned suburb Chariandy grew up in, and the younger brother’s life in a racist milieu is central to novel’s power.” (Brian Bethune, Maclean’s Magazine)