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We Are All Birds of Uganda

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We Are All Birds of Uganda

By: Hafsa Zayyan
Narrated by: Taheen Modak, Sagar Arya
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

You can’t stop birds from flying, can you, Sameer? They go where they will....

1960s Uganda. Hasan is struggling to run his family business following the sudden death of his wife. Just as he begins to see a way forward, a new regime seizes power and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built.

Present-day London. Sameer, a young, high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams. Called back to his family home by an unexpected tragedy, Sameer begins to find the missing pieces of himself not in his future plans, but in a past he never knew.

Moving between two continents and several generations over a troubled century, We Are All Birds of Uganda is a multi-layered, moving and immensely resonant novel of love, loss and what it means to find home.

It is the first work of fiction by Hafsa Zayyan, co-winner of the inaugural #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize and one of the most exciting young novelists of today.

©2021 Hafsa Zayyan (P)2021 Penguin Audio Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction South Asian Creators Africa Tear-jerking Inspiring Thought-Provoking
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I don't usually leave reviews, but see a lot of negative reviews specifically mentioning a volume difference between narrators, so wanted to clarify that this was not an issue at all when I listened to the book - and I really liked both narrators. The story was compelling right from the outset, reading this as someone living in London and visiting Uganda, wanting to learn more about the country and its recent history. I enjoyed the nuance of the dynamics, but as others noted found the way things were tied together at the end a bit rushed.

Great story + audio issues seem to have been fixed

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Great story, told by 2 family members. characters beautifully drawn.

Definitely recommend
Wonderful insight into Uganda, race, family dynamics

wonderful

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I am one of the Ugandan Asians that came here to the UK in 1972 when i was only a child. Books like this intrigue me as I am hoping to understand the true history of what happened and what my parents went through to come here. There are many similarities to the family in this story, but I felt that there was too much jumping around and not a robust telling of the story.

There were opportunities to expand and areas that were unnecessary to the story - little things that didn’t give any gravitas to anything.

Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed the story to a point but was just disappointed with elements introduced and not followed through fully. However the final couple of chapters I found very lazily written. A real shame.

What really annoyed me though on my audible was the quality of the recording (which I have flagged to audible). The narrators seem to have recorded at two different levels that either deafened me or i had to turn the volume up to high just to hear (not to mention the occasional coughing by the elder narrator).

The younger narrator wasn’t great at the pronouncing of the Gujarati words which I find annoying as I feel that they could have found a narrator who could maybe speak Gujarati! But again it wasn’t a major distraction. Not like the sound levels...gggrrrrrrrr!!!!

I would recommend the book but the mediocre scoring are my niggles. As I say, it was good but could have been great.

Good Not Great

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The story and telling of it by the actors were both so gripping! The only issue was with the chapters by Sameer’s grandfather- the audio was very muted.

Beautiful story but issues with recording

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I was soo ready to give this 5 stars until the ending. confusing 😕

Almost 5 stars 🌟

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