- Title:
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Three Famines
- Written by:
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Tom Keneally
- Read by:
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Peter Byrne
- Format:
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Unabridged CD Audio Book
- Number of CDs:
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8
- Duration:
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9 hours 16 minutes
- Published:
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June 01 2011
- Available Date:
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November 28 2011
- Age Category:
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Adult
- ISBN:
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9781742678665
- Genres:
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Non-fiction; Disasters; History; Human Rights
- Publisher:
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ABC Audio
Qty
Format
Price
Bolinda price
Bestselling author
Award winning author
Booker Prize-winning author
Miles Franklin Winner
In this compelling narrative, Keneally recounts the histories of these events while vividly evoking the terrible cost of famine at the level of the individual who starves and the nation that withers.
This is the story of three terrible famines. The first is an Gorta Mór, the great hunger of Ireland, which began in 1846. The second is the deadly famine that struck Bengal in 1943. The third is the Ethiopian famine, which first sprung up in lethal form in the 1970s under Emperor Haile Selassie and then reappeared under the brutal dictator Mengistu in the 1980s. Keneally visited Eritrea in 1984 to see the effects of this grave event.
Tom Keneally shares these three shocking histories with his customary penetrating wisdom, and he presents a controversial theory in his utterly compelling narrative: in all three famines, ideology, mindsets of governments, racial preconceptions and administrative incompetence were, ultimately, more lethal than the initiating blights, the loss of potatoes or rice or the grain named teff.
Keneally, who gave us SCHINDLER’S LIST, scores again with a portrait of three of the worst famines to strike the world since the middle of the nineteenth century—events that took place in Ireland, Bengal, and Ethiopia (twice). Peter Byrne’s simple, declarative delivery is at once clinical in its objectivity and heartrending in its passion. He makes us feel the pain and suffering of the victims he reveals. His narration flows smoothly among the three events, weaving them into a continuous tapestry of tragedy. Byrne’s Australian accent helps to enhance the international aspects of this odyssey across three continents. His timing and pacing perfectly complement the underlying histories. Students of government and social justice will appreciate the telling indictments of the regimes responsible for all three tragedies.
AudioFile Magazine
'A powerful non-fiction work that reminds us that hunger has been - and remains - among the greatest of the world’s injustices.'
The Australian
'I am sure Tom Keneally is incapable of writing a dull book'
The Sydney Morning Herald