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    A Woman Is No Man: A Novel
    A Woman Is No Man: A Novel
    A Woman Is No Man: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    A Woman Is No Man: A Novel

    Written by Etaf Rum

    Narrated by Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem and Susan Nezami

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK 

    A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March • A Marie Claire Best Women’s Fiction of 2019 • A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel • A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month • An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2019 • A USA Today Best Book of the Week • An Elaine Newton—Summer Reading List Critic’s Choice • A Girls Night In Book Club Pick

    “I couldn't put it down.  I was obsessed with figuring out the mystery of this family.""   —Jenna Bush Hager, Today Show Book Club Pick

    “Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum’s debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice.”   —Refinery 29

    “A stunning debut novel that hooked me from page one.... Rum accomplishes the high-wire act of telling a story that feels both contemporary and timeless, intimate and epic.""    —Tara Conklin, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Last Romantics

    ""Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.”

    Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear.

    Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can’t help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man.

    But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.

    Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is a story of culture and honor, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. It is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect.

    Editor's Note

    Raising women’s voices…

    TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager selected Etaf Rum’s novel about women in an immigrant community as her May 2019 #ReadWithJenna pick. Jenna said in the announcement on TODAY, “It's about what is acceptable for a woman — how a woman can use her voice. And to see these women change, and to see their idea of what they can be change over generations is really the story of so many women.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 5, 2019
    ISBN9780062897510
    A Woman Is No Man: A Novel
    Author

    Etaf Rum

    Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, by Palestinian immigrants. Her first novel, A Woman Is No Man, was a New York Times bestseller and a Today Show Read With Jenna book club pick.

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    Reviews for A Woman Is No Man

    4.5/5

    1,406 ratings92 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love reading this book is so sad make me appreciate everything a little more

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The book gave detailed accounts of what it is or was to be a Muslim woman. The strong commitment and traditions that they were so frightened to give up due to the barriers that they had been born into. It’s a page turner and difficult not to listen to every chance that was available.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I am not sure I have ever read a more tragic, heartbreaking story than this one. Devastating and masterfully executed, in my opinion.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Just OK. I wanted to know what happened to the characters, but the story fell flat. Th book was too long, but I was somewhat invested in the main characters, and the book abruptly ended. The author shaped the stories so you can interpret the characters' endings, but it is weird the way it ended. I won't recommend this read, but not say not read it. The cultural, ethnic, and religious aspects kept me interested. Everyone should read to understand others.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It was a decent book right up to the end when the story didn't make any sense. I kept thinking that my phone was jumping chapters.. Waste of my time

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I’m sitting here at the end feeling the weight of some women’s burden and thankful for the freedom I have. Very well written, heavy, startling and eye opening.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've read. To say its heartbreaking is putting it mildly.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Surely this felt exaggerated to my Iranian experience. But as a scorn woman, it felt close to home. Thanks for the beautiful writing.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Absolutely amazing storytelling, for a story that you don’t hear often. Wonderfully read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I have very mixed feelings about this book. I think it's an extremely important book and it gives a voice to a culture that does not have one in mainstream literature. It's very well written and the characters seem so real. I'm so impressed with what thd author did.

      I think where it had issues was how repetitive it was. So many of the conversations happened multiple times. I think that's accurate for real life but it can be dull to read over and over. I also think there was abolutely no happiness in this book and that was exhausting. There was no balance. I kept waiting for a strong plot and it never really came.

      I did like it and I do know why people liked it a lot. I just couldn't get over the repetitive parts and the abrubt ending.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Majority of reviews on Goodreads say the novel is heavy-handed, one-dimensional, boring and not written well. And these reviews were by non-Muslims!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      truly a must read book, i read it last year and i still thinking about it
    • 5/5
      Gripping and disturbing. The author seems to speak from first hand experience of this immigrant community. I can't help but wonder how it was received by them.
    • 5/5
      Such a sad story ???. A must read for all people who would like to understand how oppressive culture can be.
    • 4/5
      We are done









      Great reading I gave this. 4 1/2 stars
    • 5/5
      Amazing.. I was surprised to know that was the first and only novel by this author !!
    • 5/5
      This book taught me so much. Amazing from start to finish
    • 3/5
      Started to struggle with the repetitive nature of the story around chapter seven or so, and did not finish the book.
    • 5/5
      Scribd isn’t the best platform for audio book users. While its membership fee is lower than some of the other sites we compared it to, you can only listen to one audio book a month, and you can’t buy more credits or use money to purchase additional books. It also doesn’t have as many audio books in stock as the best subscription services.

      Your Scribd membership comes with some titles that are available for unlimited download, but many of them are in the public domain and can be found multiple places on the internet like LibriVox.org. For the most part, the best audio books and newer, popular titles aren’t available in this section.

      This service is better for traditional readers who want to pay less for eBooks from month to month. The $8.99 membership fee gets you three eBooks, one audio book and unlimited access to sheet music and documents, which is a better deal than Amazon’s Audible. But with an audio book library of around 70,000 titles, compared to Audible’s 180,000 plus offerings, Scribd just can’t compete.

      I compiled a list of 100 of the most popular and best books from 2016 and searched for them on each site I tested to get an idea of the kinds of titles each has available for download. Scribd had about 50 percent of the books I searched for, which is fewer than most other sites.
    • 5/5
      this is the first audiobook that i actually finished because i can't find time to read due to uni. for a first, i surprisingly loved everything--the narration, the story, and the theme <3 great work :,)
    • 5/5
      Hopeful when it seems like all hope is lost. Loved this book, the tale brought me closer to realities I did not really know existed elsewhere..
    • 4/5
      Overall a really good book and the story is so sad. Like I thought people were being dramatic when they said that it was a “heartbreaking” story but it really is lmao! The ending was kinda like???? Idk I was a little confused but I think it was like ending on a more hopeful note after all the trauma lol. I definitely recommend. 4.5/5!
    • 4/5
      This was such a heartbreaking book. It’s so sad because these types of arranged marriages still exist and there are many women suffering in silence. The only thing I disliked in the book was the description and the relationship between Sarah and Deya. The conversation sounded way too dull and insincere. The reunion was too dramatic to leave many meetings with untold stories. I didn’t see how she really helped Deya and how Fareeda changed her expectations so quickly. Maybe it missed a few more chapters to explain this reunion and the changes Fareeda was experiencing but other than that, the book is worth reading!
    • 4/5
      Beautifully written and narrated but I had issues with parts of the story. Sara’s advice to Daya was flat and unhelpful. Daya could have been placing herself in real danger and Sara’s “solution” was too simplistic, making it sound too easy for this 16 year girl. And the ending was odd although I could see what the author was trying to do. It didn’t work in my opinion. The last chapter felt unnecessary. But this was my only issue. The interweaving of the stories of multiple generations of the women of this family were fascinating and I enjoyed them very much.
    • 5/5
      Very insightful and emotional at times. I loved listening to this
    • 4/5
      A painfully real storyline for many. Loved it a lot
    • 2/5
      The book was interesting but frustrating, on one side of these people are their desire to live here and not their own homeland, the complaints are endless. The personal family side demonstrates the hypocrisy of their beliefs, woman are actually worthless, men are not responsible for anything even for the sex of their own children. Science has proven that numerous times and yet woman are still ignored, abused and sometimes killed because they had girls! How ludicrous!
    • 5/5
      Beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. Definitely recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Got me hooked till the end. The powerless women who struggle silently.
    • 5/5
      What a masterpiece! Such a good flow for the story, it takes you right in the middle of it.