Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Kenneth Branagh

Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Prose that demands to be read aloud requires a special kind of narrator. For the Audible Signature Classics edition of Joseph Conrad’s atmospheric masterpiece, Heart of Darkness, we called upon four-time Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh.

Branagh’s performance is riveting because he reads as though he’s telling a ghost story by a campfire, capturing the story’s sense of claustrophobia, while hinting at the storyteller Marlow’s own creeping madness. Heart of Darkness follows Captain Marlow into the colonial Congo where he searches for a mysterious ivory trader, Kurtz, and discovers an evil that will haunt him forever.

With this landmark work, Conrad is credited with bringing the novel into the twentieth century; we think Branagh brings it into the twenty-first.

Stay tuned for more one-of-a-kind performances from actors David Hyde Pierce, Leelee Sobieski, Tim Curry, and more, only from Audible Signature Classics.

Listen to more Audible Signature Classics.

Public Domain (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Acclaimed Irish actor/director Kenneth Branagh impersonates Marlow in this recording. Admirably, while fully playing the drama, he never goes overboard. He plays the tale for the great yarn that it is." ( AudioFile)

Underplayed. Unparalleled writing.

Branagh offers a quiet reading, presumably in a well-reasoned effort to not get in the way of a perfectly wrought text. I think the reading could have conveyed meanings in the text better. A good preface or afterword might also have been useful to help bridge the century since this mysterious text was written.

Brilliant

The best version of this book I’ve ever experienced. Branagh is brilliant. Classic story well told.

Enchanted

The writers artful style, and Branaghs voice and cadence makes this a short and truly enjoyable listen.

Terrific story and performance.

I really enjoyed hearing this story and performance. There was a humanity to the way the story was read that provided a balance to the dark circumstances of the story. I will listen to this book again.

Fantastic performance and edit

I’ll need to re-read the story to figure out what was abridged but the flow was excellent. I’m always amazed that English was not Conrad’s first language. It takes a narrator like Brianna to do his words, justice and impressive. How beautiful they are still today in modern language.

Branagh makes this classic riveting

Kenneth Branagh makes this classic piece of English literature into a brilliant storytelling experience. I knew the novel and I knew its importance, but it truly came alive in an emotional way for me from listening to this terrific version of the book. It made me see more clearly than ever the meaning and impact of Kurtz’s famous line and of the title. Heart of Darkness is the great work of anticolonialism, and Branagh is brilliant.

Branagh's reading is orchestral.

This was the third or fourth time I have read or listened to this novel, but my first exposure to Branagh's interpretation. I am grateful to Conrad and Branagh for the experience.

Wonderful performance by Kenneth Branagh

Superb narration of Conrad’s short work really brought it to life for me. Quite a harrowing story with a truly horrific backstory (that is not dwelt on overly here).

The wonderful narration

To this modern reader, Joseph Conrad seems vague and wordy, suffused with the values and style of another time. A period piece in the same way that Apocalypse Now seems distant. I am so glad I happened upon it. Experiencing it through Kenneth Branough’s masterful narration was thrilling.

A Brilliant Reading of a Troubling Story

If you could sum up Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh in three words, what would they be?

Superbly Acted Reading

Who was your favorite character and why?

The Russian engineer/adventurer who has so totally fallen under Kurtz's sphere of influence and is willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of "this great man," is a character I have never really noticed before. Branaugh brings him to full vigorous life and his coversations with Marlowe become a key to the book.

What about Kenneth Branagh’s performance did you like?

Magnificent acting of every sentence. Nothing is thrown away or "phoned in." Branaugh lives and breathes the character of the narrator, Marlowe,and through him, all the other characters.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The death of the native helmsman and Marlowe's reaction to it, compared to his reaction to the death of Kurtz is a high point of the book.

Any additional comments?

Such a difficult novella, I have read it so many times, and there is something new in every reading, and yet the final essence, like Kurtz himself, is in the end, undefinable. I think that those who see "Heart of Darkness" as a simple indictment of colonialism, or the Belgians or the ivory trade, or whatever, are somehow missing a large part of the story. And yet, what is that story? Who, really, is Kurtz, or for that matter, Marlowe? I think the answer is as elusive at the answer to Conrad's other great story of identity, "The Secret Sharer." We can never really know. But this reading by a master actor, like the tides of the Congo River itself, brings us closer to an answer. Worth listening more than once.