Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals
    Unavailable
    Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals
    Unavailable
    Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals
    Audiobook9 hours

    Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

    Written by Jesse Armstrong

    Narrated by Chris Addison

    2.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    It's 1994 and the former Yugoslavia is being torn apart. In England, a gang of good-hearted young people are about to set off in a Ford Transit van armed with several sacks of rice and a half-written play. A play which will light a beacon of peace across the Balkans and, very probably, stop the war.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateApr 2, 2015
    ISBN9781471297045
    Unavailable
    Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

    More audiobooks from Jesse Armstrong

    Related to Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      OreoArroyo

      Jul 6, 2021

      WHEN THE STRIPPER STRUTTED INTO THE LIBRARY, SHE COULDN’T hide her dismay. Probably, she and her bodyguard expected a bachelor party or investment bankers celebrating a big deal at the mansion overlooking the Newport Coast. She wouldn’t have anticipa

      21 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      G’day – And Goodbye

      Aug 25, 2021

      G’day – And Goodbye
      4 min read

    • Article

      Parent-child Fencing Class

      Jan 1, 2020

      Because I was too mean to make him a brother,my son has had to learn of hate alone.I told my friend I’d only ever wantedone child for reasons to do with the shapeof an arrow. But in truth I’m so disgustedby what I know of brothers, having given birth

      4 min read

    • Article

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 19, 2020

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Joan of Arc Puppet Show

      Jun 1, 2019

      The Joan of Arc Puppet Show
      14 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Three Poems
      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      How thoughtlesslyI took it, this castiron Aunt Jemima doll hauled from the trunkof my whitefriend’s car. Another of T’s, her Jamaicanhusband’s, mementoshe collected as a joke. Not unlikethose figurinesI recall a college friend once exhibited, who’d b

      6 min read

    • Article

      Woman About Town

      Jul 28, 2022

      Woman About Town
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Courage To Be Happy

      Feb 1, 2023

      MARRIAGE and columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in these pages, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather

      3 min read

    • Article

      Sam Delaney Is At Home

      Oct 24, 2022

      I received an unsolicited package in the mail. It was a padded envelope, pretty crumpled, my name and address scrawled in Sharpie. Maybe I’ve watched too many police procedurals, but I immediately analysed the handwriting as being that of a psychopat

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Money Box

      Jun 10, 2022

      This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story. It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He

      19 min read

    • Article

      Appreciating Hate

      Sep 10, 2021

      Felix thought of his mind as though it were artwork – a painting. His skull was the frame, the canvas inside the frame was the grey matter, the applied paint was his education, and that insubstantial feeling evoked by the art piece was his consciousn

      7 min read

    • Article

      Some Are Born Great…

      Mar 10, 2020

      Some Are Born Great…
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Man Behind the Counter

      Mar 4, 2019

      The Man Behind the Counter
      8 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

    2.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      The first time I heard of this book, it was from the First to Read program. However, it only gave me a month to finish it and I could not finish it for many reasons. I was expecting something humorous since the name of the title seem so. I hate to give up on ARC books that I promise to read and review; that was why I had to request an audio copy when I saw it being offer again on Audio Jukebox.

      The narrator, Chris Addison, seemed to help with my situation. I could finally finish the book within a reasonable time-frame. Since the book is written by a British celebrity, the narration does have British accent. The pace was relaxing. He did not add much emotion but the book itself is boring. I was hoping Jesse Armstrong would have narrated his own book since he is somewhat known and authors reading their own books are usually better.

      As for the story, I wish I have something nice to say. The group had no idea what they were doing or what was going on in the world. They just wanted to go in the war zone to spread peace. They had no idea how to get, how to spread the words, or anything at all. Most of the men just wanted to sleep with the women in the group and lied about everything. Even after the trip, they had not learned anything.

      2 out of 5 stars
      Received a free e-copy from First to Read and audio copy from Audio Jukebox in exchange for an honest review.
    • 3/5
      In this first novel by Peep Show writer Jesse Armstrong, a group of activists decide to take a play to the former Yugoslavia at the height of the war. Their motives are varied and ambiguous (a certain amount of sexual longing, intellectual arrogance and ambition are in the mix) but overall they are motivated by a kind of benevolent woolliness. Andrew, the narrator, joins them, having refined his foreign policy while skiving at his job in a supermarket warehouse. He is insightful but a bit passive and manipulative, particularly in his infatuation with the writer of the play, Penny. Inevitably, travelling through a war zone turns out to be less straightforward than Andrew or the group had envisaged.I liked the premise of this novel. I felt nostalgic for the days when people like Andrew did crap jobs as a lifestyle choice, rather than because that’s all there is. The world of the group is immediately recognisable to anyone who’s ever been involved in direct action. But that is part of the problem with this book. There are some nice observations, the pages turn easily, and I did laugh out loud a few times, but I felt that nothing surprised me, in either the characters or the plot.I wonder if this book is something Armstrong had in a drawer and dusted off for publication. It doesn’t feel as technically accomplished as his TV work. It has a dogged ‘and then’ narration rather than a strong story arc. Its great strength is that reading it does feel exactly like going on a very long minibus journey with a gang of friends, with all the pleasures and pitfalls that entails. Sometimes they’re fun, sometimes they’re annoying, sometimes you wonder if you should have bothered. I think Armstrong has shied away from engaging with the full horrors of the war. There are some dark moments, but I did feel that the characters, the reader and the author all got off too lightly.This is surprising because the programmes he’s written – from Peep Show to The Thick of It to Babylon – are all ruthless in their depiction of people’s failings. It’s hard to find anyone likeable in any of them. And they’re also not afraid to push their characters to the limit just to see how they react. Like Andrew, this book seemed a little timid and a little too keen to be liked. -I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.