The President and the Frog: A novel
Carolina De Robertis
Aug 2021 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Carolina De Robertis
3.5star
2 reviews
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5 hr 28 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
A "sublime and gripping novel ... about hope: that within the world's messy pain there is still room for transformation and healing" (Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe), from the acclaimed author of Cantoras.
“In the president’s excruciating (and sometimes humorous) encounters with his strangely healing frog ... De Robertis daringly invites us to imagine a man’s Promethean struggle to wrest control of his broken psyche under the most dire circumstances possible.” —The New York Times Book Review
At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Once known as the Poorest President in the World, his reputation is the stuff of myth: a former guerilla who was jailed for inciting revolution before becoming the face of justice, human rights, and selflessness for his nation. Now, as he talks to the journalist, he wonders if he should reveal the strange secret of his imprisonment: while held in brutal solitary confinement, he survived, in part, by discussing revolution, the quest for dignity, and what it means to love a country, with the only creature who ever spoke back—a loud-mouth frog.
As engrossing as it is innovative, vivid, moving, and full of wit and humor, The President and the Frog explores the resilience of the human spirit and what is possible when danger looms. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president's lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.
“In the president’s excruciating (and sometimes humorous) encounters with his strangely healing frog ... De Robertis daringly invites us to imagine a man’s Promethean struggle to wrest control of his broken psyche under the most dire circumstances possible.” —The New York Times Book Review
At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Once known as the Poorest President in the World, his reputation is the stuff of myth: a former guerilla who was jailed for inciting revolution before becoming the face of justice, human rights, and selflessness for his nation. Now, as he talks to the journalist, he wonders if he should reveal the strange secret of his imprisonment: while held in brutal solitary confinement, he survived, in part, by discussing revolution, the quest for dignity, and what it means to love a country, with the only creature who ever spoke back—a loud-mouth frog.
As engrossing as it is innovative, vivid, moving, and full of wit and humor, The President and the Frog explores the resilience of the human spirit and what is possible when danger looms. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president's lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.
Ratings and reviews
3.5
2 reviews
Michael Perkins
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September 25, 2022
It is so disappointing that the author chose to read the frog's lines in such an insanely over-the-top voice. It kills this audiobook. When the absurd voice is first introduced, you're thinking "Oh my god, no way every line is going to be like this." And then, sure enough, it is. The frog's lines, if delivered with tasteful subtlety and normal human inflection, would be eerie, haunting, and supernaturally evocative. But the author chose for some reason to read it like a cartoon ghost from a pre-K level children's show, with every line being drawn out and given this bizarre "OoOoOh" affectation. For example, she writes the frog stoicly and matter-of-factly saying, "You're an ***hole"...but then delivers the line like a Sesame Street muppet ghost. Why? I finished the print version, and this book is really cool and emotionally compelling. What a shame that the audio version is unlistenable.
About the author
CAROLINA DE ROBERTIS is the author of five novels, including The President of the Frog, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, as well as Cantoras, winner of a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award, and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages and she has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Baldwin-Emerson Fellowship, Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize, and numerous other honors. An author of Uruguayan origins, she teaches at San Francisco State University, and lives in Oakland, California, with her wife and two children.
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