About 10 years ago, I was given Peter Benchley's Shark Trouble as a present. Ever since being terrified by Jaws as a child, I have been obsessed not only with sharks but also the man who wrote the blockbuster that inspired Steven Spielberg.
Even more exciting, the gift was an audiobook read by Benchley himself, whose cultured tones promised in the introduction to describe the writing of Jaws, actual encounters with Great Whites and his commitment to marine ecology.
The problem was I never actually got around to listening to more than the first 10 minutes. The book's unabridged length filled no fewer than five CDs, which were housed in a less-than-compact box. My only CD player was at home and I quickly found that no one else in my student house wanted to spend an evening listening to the Jaws guy tell 'True Stories about Sharks and the Sea'. I didn't have a car (where American bibliophiles tend to listen to audio-books on long trips), and the only portable music player I owned was a cassette Walkman (Google that, kids). It wasn't until I was able to 'rip' MP3 files from CDs that I finally enjoyed Shark Troubles on a flight to the United States.
My experience describes a broader trend. After years in the shadows, audiobooks are enjoying a boom – The Wall Street Journal calls it an "explosion". This is news indeed when sales of physical books are in decline. The 19.5 per cent rise in audiobook unit sales last year is, according to the American Publishers Association, nearly five times that of the industry as a whole (roughly 4.2 per cent as of June).
"I think we've been told 'this is the year audiobooks are taking off for about eight years', but in the last couple, it really has," says Tom Tivnan of the publishing industry bible The Bookseller.
Like most experts, Tivnan believes the rise is largely down to technology. "Streaming and speed of downloads helps, but simply that most people have a smartphone is probably the main factor," he says. Similar developments in digital recording and distribution have resulted in sharp falls in prices. The Wall Street Journal notes that Stephen King's lengthy The Stand cost US$100 (Dh367) in 1978. Today it can be downloaded for $33 – less with a monthly subscription.
This success story goes hand-in-hand with that of Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook download website. Set up 20 years ago, it had released up to 26,000 audiobooks by 2014. Growing at about 1,000 titles a month, Audible aims to bring its online library closer to 100,000.
Such popularity has attracted bigger names to the narrating feast. Audiobooks have made stars of otherwise jobbing actors like Simon Vance, Orlagh Cassidy and Ron McLarty. As the market and prestige increases, bona fide A-listers like Colin Firth, Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman have all now read books.
This steep ascent asks important questions, not least: is the way we consume literature undergoing a profound change? Don Katz, Audible’s founder, certainly thinks so.
"We're moving toward a media agnostic consumer who doesn't think of the difference between textual and visual and auditory experience," he told The Wall Street Journal. Bestselling crime writer Mark Billingham agrees, in slightly different terms. "I think people will always enjoy having a story told to them. It's not something that happens often after childhood and it's a rare and special treat."
One can find these childish connotations troubling. Being read to undercuts one of literature's great joys: namely the creation of an individual imaginary world. Readers decide how characters look but also how they sound. Handing this over to someone else removes some of the demands and freedoms of a good book. Whether you are listening to Harry Potter or À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, it ceases to be your Harry Potter or À La Recherche du Temps Perdu.
“Even a ‘straight reading’ is an adaptation,” says Tivnan. “It can be jarring if, say, your favourite character audiobook voice isn’t how you imagined.”
Reading for the ear differs from reading with the eye in other ways. How do you say italics? Do you attempt different voices? What about David Foster Wallace's many footnotes? Do you include them in the main text or wait to the end? (The answer provided by Sean Pratt's 28-hour audiobook of Infinite Jest is to leave them out entirely.)
One way to address this bind is for a writer to read their own work. As Tivnan notes, "I think that's why the best audiobooks are ones where the production is sympathetic to what the author would have wanted." Even this has its pros and cons. Eimear McBride's gorgeous voice and sensitivity to sound and rhythm makes her A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing an audio-masterpiece. Julian Barnes's rumble when narrating Flaubert's Parrot suits his pompous character but doesn't make for an attractive listen.
Another self-reader is Billingham, an actor and comedian before he hit bestseller lists with his Tom Thorne crime novels. The decision to read was, he admits, more by accident than design.
“There was a mix-up with dates when it came to booking the usual reader and I stepped in. I really enjoyed myself and now I always read them.”
As for the main challenges, he says: “It’s far harder work than I ever imagined. It usually takes around four days and at the end of each day’s recording I’m always exhausted.”
Billingham names dramatising voices as the real test.
“When I’m writing I’ll blithely say that one character is Welsh or Polish and then forget about it until I have to do the accents!
“Trying to distinguish between characters is a real art.”
Finding the right narrator is also an art. Publishers choose different actors to read the same book in different territories. While Stephen Fry reads Harry Potter in the United Kingdom, Jim Dale does the honours in America. Nor are big stars a guarantee of quality. Matt Dillon may seem ideal to read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but his grizzled, weary voice is a far cry from the effervescent tone of this young man's novel.
Louise Penny faced a melancholy problem when Ralph Cosham, the award-winning narrator of her internationally-bestselling Armand Gamache mysteries, died last year. “When Ralph passed away we lost a great friend, but also the voice of the books. Over 10 years he fixed himself in people’s imaginations as the voice of Armand Gamache. They felt they were walking beside the characters, not as voyeurs, but as actual participants. People felt Gamache had died.”
Despite these pitfalls, more redolent of television than literature, the audiobook market shows no sign of slowing down. Industry commentators predict that its current market share of 10 per cent may rise to 20 per cent. Publishers are realising that audiobooks can promote physical books and vice versa.
Tivnan notes how Penguin Random House used Reese Witherspoon narrating Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman as a trailer for the hardback publication. Stephen King has done something similar with his audio-story Drunken Fireworks, which was released months ahead of his new collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.
In 2013, British crime writer David Hewson became the first established novelist to write fiction for audiobooks as his primary medium.
The picture in the Middle East is less certain, but clearly at a far more embryonic stage. In 2014, Hala Salah Eldin Ali, editor of the online literary quarterly Albawtaka Review, boldly announced she was releasing the "very first literary audiobook in the Arab World". Entitled This Is Not Chick Lit: Stories by Ordinary Women in and Beyond Turmoil, the book is an anthology, Ali has said, of "great authors who wrote passionately about women's lives and challenges".
Like the very first audiobooks produced in the 1930s, this one is aimed at blind and visually impaired young people in Egypt and Libya. Her project, which was partly funded by Unesco, has attracted some impressive narrators, including the Egyptian-Lebanese novelist and journalist Sahar Mandour, Lebanese translator Iman Humaydan, Iraq’s Alia Mamdouh, and Egypt’s acclaimed Miral Al Tahawy. Ali says she hopes to launch the first contemporary audiobook online store in the Arab world by the end of the year.
The challenge for Ali and the industry as a whole is maintaining quality both in the books selected and production values. But whether you listen on your phone, CD or even a tape through your local library, the 21st century audiobook has already changed publishing for good. Read ’em and weep is so last century. Listen and weep is here to stay.
James Kidd is a freelance reviewer based in London.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Hamilton’s 2017
Australia - 2nd; China - 1st; Bahrain - 2nd; Russia - 4th; Spain - 1st; Monaco - 7th; Canada - 1st; Azerbaijan - 5th; Austria - 4th; Britain - 1st; Hungary - 4th; Belgium - 1st; Italy - 1st; Singapore - 1st; Malaysia - 2nd; Japan - 1st; United States - 1st; Mexico - 9th
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
England-South Africa Test series
1st Test England win by 211 runs at Lord's, London
2nd Test South Africa win by 340 runs at Trent Bridge, Nottingham
3rd Test July 27-31 at The Oval, London
4th Test August 4-8 at Old Trafford, Manchester
Crazy Rich Asians
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeon, Gemma Chan
Four stars
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
A Cat, A Man, and Two Women
Junichiro Tamizaki
Translated by Paul McCarthy
Daunt Books
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
David Haye record
Total fights: 32
Wins: 28
Wins by KO: 26
Losses: 4
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
Key figures in the life of the fort
Sheikh Dhiyab bin Isa (ruled 1761-1793) Built Qasr Al Hosn as a watchtower to guard over the only freshwater well on Abu Dhabi island.
Sheikh Shakhbut bin Dhiyab (ruled 1793-1816) Expanded the tower into a small fort and transferred his ruling place of residence from Liwa Oasis to the fort on the island.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Shakhbut (ruled 1818-1833) Expanded Qasr Al Hosn further as Abu Dhabi grew from a small village of palm huts to a town of more than 5,000 inhabitants.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Shakhbut (ruled 1833-1845) Repaired and fortified the fort.
Sheikh Saeed bin Tahnoon (ruled 1845-1855) Turned Qasr Al Hosn into a strong two-storied structure.
Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa (ruled 1855-1909) Expanded Qasr Al Hosn further to reflect the emirate's increasing prominence.
Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan (ruled 1928-1966) Renovated and enlarged Qasr Al Hosn, adding a decorative arch and two new villas.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan (ruled 1966-2004) Moved the royal residence to Al Manhal palace and kept his diwan at Qasr Al Hosn.
Sources: Jayanti Maitra, www.adach.ae
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Akeed
Based: Muscat
Launch year: 2018
Number of employees: 40
Sector: Online food delivery
Funding: Raised $3.2m since inception
Company%20Profile
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Getting there
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Tbilisi from Dh1,025 return including taxes
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Saturday's results
Brighton 1-1 Leicester City
Everton 1-0 Cardiff City
Manchester United 0-0 Crystal Palace
Watford 0-3 Liverpool
West Ham United 0-4 Manchester City
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 201hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 320Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 8.7L/100km
Price: Dh133,900
On sale: now
What can you do?
Document everything immediately; including dates, times, locations and witnesses
Seek professional advice from a legal expert
You can report an incident to HR or an immediate supervisor
You can use the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation’s dedicated hotline
In criminal cases, you can contact the police for additional support
Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
GRAN%20TURISMO
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FROM%20THE%20ASHES
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SPEC%20SHEET%3A%20SAMSUNG%20GALAXY%20Z%20FOLD%204
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A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
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The specs: 2018 Ford Mustang GT
Price, base / as tested: Dh204,750 / Dh241,500
Engine: 5.0-litre V8
Gearbox: 10-speed automatic
Power: 460hp @ 7,000rpm
Torque: 569Nm @ 4,600rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 10.3L / 100km
Company%20profile
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