When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (2000, Unabridged, Audio Cassette)

Ishiguru’s beautifully written novel involves a broken man's search for love, truth, and understanding that resonates on many levels. A child of English parents raised in an international settlement in Shanghai, Christoper Banks was outside of society’s mainstream from the beginning. Matters did not improve when his father mysteriously disappeared. The nine-year old Christopher allayed his concerns by compulsively playing detective and pretending to find his father, only to lose his mother soon thereafter and return to England, events which increased his alienation. Twenty years later Banks tells us that he is an acclaimed sleuth whose lifelong mission has been to discover the fate of his parents. His search, which may or may not be happening, has the blurry unreliability of a dream, as you might expect from someone whose perceptions were distorted by his childhood trauma. Narrator John Lee’s formal and carefully modulated reading is perfect for the troubled Banks, whose Britishness was studied rather than acquired naturally. He is also a flexible reader, however, adept at differentiating the voices of the other characters in the novel, be they male, female, Chinese, Japanese or English.