Narrator Dennis Kleinman commands a great range of South African accents in this reading, showing differences in class, ethnicity, even gender, through speech patterns more than vocal impersonations. He handles the fragments of Yiddish, Afrikaans, and Zulu with no difficulty. Unfortunately, the characters themselves provide few challenges. The protagonist, Isaac Helger, who moves from a Lithuanian Jewish settlement to South Africa as a child, goes through some changes and learns about various forms of racism, but listeners are told about most of his growth rather than seeing it develop through the story. Some of his formative moments, mostly humiliations and acts of violence, are chilling in this production, but the book is too uneven to allow a truly bravura performance. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2014]
Digital Download Audible, Inc. 2014
DD ISBN $29.95
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