Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayThe Story of the Forest
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreA Paste Most Anticipated Historical Fiction for Fall
An “epic and marvelously entertaining” family saga by award-winning author Linda Grant about the European Jewish experience from WWI to the present day, that “constantly moves forward even as it looks sorrowfully back” (Financial Times).
It’s 1913 when Mina, the young and carefree daughter of a Jewish merchant, roams into a forest on the edge of the Baltic Sea looking for mushrooms. Instead, she encounters a gang of unruly, charismatic Bolsheviks—an adventure that will become the stuff of familial lore for generations to come. Intending to save her from further corruption, and in an act that forever changes the trajectory of their family’s life, Mina and her eldest brother, Jossel, board a ship to England.
There the threat of a different war looms large. When WWI hits, Jossel is sent to the front, where he keeps a severely wounded soldier in his unit alive ‘til morning by telling him tales—including that his sister Mina will marry him if he survives. The soldier lives and asks for Mina’s hand, their marriage uniting two growing trade dynasties. But over time Mina and Jossel will learn that not everyone in their family has survived the wars and pogroms, even as they and their offspring struggle to build new lives in Liverpool in the midst of ever-shifting discriminations.
Based on the author’s own family history and legends, The Story of the Forest?is a remarkable record of family lore; a meditation on the power of stories to ground us, particularly in the face of life’s inevitable losses, told with a keen wit and a sharp eye to the charms and the foibles of family by masterful British novelist Linda Grant.
"Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984. She now lives in London and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. website lindagrant.co.uk Fiction The Cast Iron Shore, Granta Books (London) 1995 When I Lived in Modern Times, Granta Books (London) 2000 Still Here, Little Brown May (London) 2002 The Clothes on Their Backs, Virago Press (London) 2008 We Had It So Good, Virago Press (London) 2011 Upstairs at the Party, Virago Press (London) 2014 The Dark Circle, Virago Press (London) 2016 A Stranger City , Virago Press (London) 2019 Non-Fiction Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution. HarperCollins (London) 1993 Remind Me Who I Am, Again Granta Books (London) 1998 The People on the Street, a writer's view of Israel, Virago Press (London) 2006 The Thoughtful Dresser, Virago Press (London) 2009 Awards The Dark Circle Shortlisted for the Bailey's Prize for Fiction Jewish Quarterly Prize Longlisted Walter Scott prize for historical fiction The Clothes On Their Backs Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 Winner South Bank Show Award The People on the Street:A Writer's View of Israel Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage Still Here Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2002 When I Lived in Modern Times Winner, Orange Prize for Fiction 2000 Shorlisted: Jewish Quarterly Prize, Encore Prize Remind Me Who I Am, Again Mind Book of the Year 1999 Age Concern Book of the Year 1999 The Cast Iron Shore David Higham First Novel Prize Shortlisted Guardian Fiction Prize "