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The Quiet American
- Narrated by: Joseph Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
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- Unabridged
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British airman Dym Ingleford is convinced that the young German prisoner, Max Eckermann, is his brother Anthony, who was kidnapped years before. Raised in the Nazi ideology, Tony has by chance tumbled into British hands. Dym has brought him back, at least temporarily, to the family he neither remembers nor will acknowledge as his own.
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More people should read this wonderful story!!!
- By E.F.B. on 08-02-18
By: Constance Savery
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Down Cemetery Road
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.
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Not as good as Slough House
- By wisconsinclark on 08-09-20
By: Mick Herron
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Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
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Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
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Staying On
- By: Paul Scott
- Narrated by: Paul Shelley
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pankot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their imposing landlady threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days.
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A Pleasant Meander
- By Ian C Robertson on 09-22-14
By: Paul Scott
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Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Dying in the Wool
- A Kate Shackleton Mystery, Book 1
- By: Frances Brody
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Bridgestead is a peaceful spot: a babbling brook, rolling hills, and a working mill at its heart. Pretty and remote, nothing exceptional happens...until the day that Master of the Mill Joshua Braithwaite goes missing under dramatic circumstances, never to be heard of again. Now Joshua's daughter is getting married and wants to make one last attempt at finding her father. Kate Shackleton has always loved solving puzzles. So who better to get to the bottom of Joshua's mysterious disappearance?
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Fluff & Nonsense
- By Sara on 01-03-15
By: Frances Brody
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Combining biography, history, and politics, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene's fictional one. This includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. Exploiting a wealth of archival material and interviews with key protagonists, Our Man Down in Havana delves into the story behind and beyond the author's prophetic Cuban tale, focusing on one slice of Greene's manic life: a single novel and its complex history.
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Entertaining and informative
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Lousy recording quality of bad narration
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When a leak is traced back to a small sub-section of SIS, it sparks off security checks, tensions and suspicions - the sort of atmosphere where mistakes could be made. This novel opens up the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the Secret Service.
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Entertaining and informative
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The Third Man (Dramatized)
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Somewhere in shadowy post-war Vienna, where everyone has something to sell on the black market, lurks "the third man", who witnessed the murder of Harry Lime. The police don't care to investigate, but novelist Holly Martins is haunted by the death of his friend, and his search for the killer makes for electrifying drama.
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Awful Reader
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The Living Room
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London in the 1950s: a mysterious house, home to a family that has seen better days, will not yield its secrets, and a love affair turns to tragedy. Graham Greene, one of the foremost writers of the 20th century, based this play on his own passionate, doomed affairs and his conflicted view of Catholicism.
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Another great Graham Greene experience 💜
- By BobMGre on 02-13-22
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The Confidential Agent
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Trusted by no one, trusting nobody, the Confidential Agent is sent to England. But before his mission has barely begun, he comes face to face with an agent from the other side. As the car he is driving is run down in the fog, a thought strikes him: "It isn't probable - not in England, but it seems to be true, nonetheless - they're going to kill me."
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approach it as a fable
- By connie on 10-18-08
By: Graham Greene
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The Heart of the Matter
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A police commissioner in a British-governed, war-torn West African state, Scobie is bound by the strictest integrity and sense of duty both for his colonial responsibilities and for his wife, whom he deeply pities but no longer loves. Passed over for a promotion, he is forced to borrow money in order to send his despairing wife away on a holiday.
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Characters come to life with Greene as the author
- By John on 06-08-11
By: Graham Greene
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The Captain and the Enemy
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Victor was only 12 when the Captain took him away from school to live with Liza, his girlfriend. He claimed that Victor, now reborn as Jim Smith, had been won as the result of a bet. Having reached his 20s, Jim attempts to piece together the story.
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"Who is This King Kong?"
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It's a Battlefield
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During a demonstration in Hyde Park, Communist bus driver Jim Drover acts on instinct to protect his wife by stabbing to death the policeman set to strike her down. Sentenced to hang—whether as a martyr, tool, or murderer—Drover accepts his lot, unaware that the ramifications for the crime, and the battle for his reprieve, are inflaming political unrest in an increasingly divided city. But Drover's single, impulsive act is also upending the lives of the people he loves and trusts.
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Stamboul Train
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Aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe towards Constantinople, a relationship develops between Carleton Myatt and Coral Musker, a naive English chorus girl. Around them a web of espionage, murder and lies twist in this spy thriller.
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Poignance and Power on the Orient Express
- By Darwin8u on 07-10-12
By: Graham Greene
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The Man Within
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Graham Greene's first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling.
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The Unquiet Englishman
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The Unquiet Englishman braids the narratives of Greene's extraordinary life. It portrays a man who was traumatized as an adolescent and later suffered a mental illness that brought him to the point of suicide on several occasions; it tells the story of a restless traveler and unfailing advocate for human rights exploring troubled places around the world, a man who struggled to believe in God and found himself described as a great Catholic writer; it reveals a private life in which love almost always ended in ruin, alongside a larger story of politicians, battlefields, and spies.
By: Richard Greene
What listeners say about The Quiet American
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Richard
- 07-12-12
Terrible narrator nearly derails Greene novel.
Because Audible asks us about performance, I feel that I should bring it up. But first, because of a recent trip to Viet Nam, I decided to get and listen to this book. The story, itself, is remarkable and very prescient regarding American impending tragic and misguided involvement into Southeast Asia. But at it's heart, "The Quiet American" is a tale of two dissimilar men and their love for a beautiful Vietnamese woman. One man is an older British newspaperman saddled with a wife back in England. The other is a young, naive, low level, diplomat from Boston. The bonds, these two forge in friendship and rivalry, whether in a Saigon dance club or in the heat of battle, takes up the majority of this book.
Unfortunately, Joseph Porter, fails miserably on all accounts in his narrating. Aside from his stilted readings of prose that is both beautiful and exciting, his accents, age and sex differentiation's are atrocious. His Englishmen seem to all come from some strange middle-class. Fowler, the stories narrator, is a mid-fifties hard drinking and smoking Londoner and yet he sounds like bland radio personality. Pyle his rival and friend is even worse, sounding like a late forties mid-westerner with an sixth grade reading level. All the other characters just sound canned-spaggetti versions of real people.
Seriously, forget listening and read the book.
Audilble please redo this classic and terrific story with a much better voice.
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46 people found this helpful
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- Jay A. Gladieux
- 10-24-11
I just could not listen to this narrator
with his silly attempts at an American accent and overly stilted British one. The story is a good one.
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26 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Vinchi
- 07-17-09
unbearable
This reader is unbearable, could only stand it for an hour. Listen to a sample before you buy this one.
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24 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cliff
- 03-19-11
Bostonian With a Southern Twang...kinda
While the story was intriguing enough, the narration was a great distraction. The attempt at an American accent (that should have been Bostonian but came across as a bad Southern accent) was poor to be generous. If you want to know what the American accent sounded like, watch Young Frankenstein and listen to the character "Inspector Kemp." It was to say the least very distracting, bordering on annoying.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Doug
- 07-21-09
Mystery & political intrigue
The Quiet American of the title is not the simple aide worker he seems to be...he has been sent to Vietnam to open a door for American influence, to secure a place for American power to grow from a tiny beginning. The American government sees that the French are about to lose the country, and the Americans do not plan to stand by and let the country go "communist."
Greene astutely points out that to the peasants in the rice fields, who have been there for hundreds of years and will be there for hundreds more, the style of government in the capital, whether it be Hanoi or Saigon or elsewhere, matters little. The rice farmer is concerned with his work and with feeding his family...he knows nothing of the democracy of the Greeks or of the socialism of Marx.
But powerful nations are determined to play out their chess game in Vietnam, indeed in all of Indochina. And this quiet American is calm on the surface but roiling inside with his idealism of saving these little brown brothers from the evil of communism....saving them even at the cost of killing a few, or more than a few of them in the process.
Along with a morally ambiguous plot, standard in Greene novels, there is an unusual love story involving two western men who are captured by the allure of a young and beautiful Vietnamese woman. For both men she is life itself...but she may also be death, perhaps for the one who wins her and also for the one who loses her.
An earlier reviewer did not like the narrator, the reader of the audiobook. Like him, I say listen to a sample. I did not find the reader to be unsatisfactory. For me, the reader simply disappeared as I got caught up in the story. Isn't that the way it should be?
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10 people found this helpful
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- Stephen
- 05-26-16
Excellent Book and Fine Narrator
People need to take it easy on the narrator. His upper crust British accent is perfect for the material. His "American accent" is a bit distracting at first, mostly because of all of the horrible reviews it got. It isn't that big of a deal. He uses it relatively rarely throughout because the book contains much more narrative than dialogue. The writing is exquisite.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Fred
- 04-26-10
Bad Narrator
I had to read this book for a U.S. History course in college. I got through a good portion of the book by reading - but decided to buy the audiobook as listening is much more convienent. After 5 minutes of listening I had to turn it off. The narrator is so unlively and boring that it made the book unbearable. Take caution and listen to the sample before buying.
I still give it two stars, because the story is excellent for those who are history junkies :]
-Steph.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 09-15-17
Classic Story, Terrible Narration
Would you try another book from Graham Greene and/or Joseph Porter?
Yes, of course, Graham Greene is someone to be read and appreciated.(I gave the "story" 4-stars on the basis of its reputation.) But listen to Joseph Porter again? Not ever.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Quiet American?
The shame of it is that I listened only to 70 minutes or so until finally giving up. I instead will have to complete the book by finding a printed copy to read.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Joseph Porter?
Anyone else would have been better. Certainly an experienced actor could have done better. (I cannot imagine the gentleman is or had been a professional actor.) Charitably, one might say the only value Mr. Porter brings to the narration is his British accent as Greene's character telling the story is an Englishman. But Porter's reading of the text is so stilted that even his accent does not compensate for his lack of storytelling ability and his very mechanical reading of the text. There is little flow in his spoken sentences. Very little expression. And his intended American accent is atrocious. Think of the worst attempt an Englishman might give when offering a Texas accent and that's what he gave to the title character.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Great disappointment and wonder (as in I wonder how Porter was chosen to read the story however many years ago).
Any additional comments?
Rarely do I critique a narrator in such a way but it is for good cause. This is an example of a recording that should be removed for the list or at least carry a caveat emptor notice that one MUST listen to the sample recording. I didn't and I regret that I did not.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Rebecca Finger
- 10-24-19
If you feel like listening to Vincent Price drone on for 6 hours, this is the book for you!!!
This is the most unpleasant narration of a book I have ever heard. The entire book sounds like Vincent w cos
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3 people found this helpful
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- Bene vixit bene latuit
- 08-21-19
Narrator distracts from the tale.
Graham Greene fans will be enthused by this book but I wish I had read it rather than listened.
1) I do not speak French and thus feel I'm missing some of the nuances as there is the occasional line of French in the book.
2) The narrator's missteps really distract me from enjoying the book. I believe the character Alden Pyle is said to hail from Boston but the accent given him by this (I believe) British narrator sounds like rural Texas. It would be amusing if it were not so irritating.
Choosing titles to listen to rather than read is tricky. This one was a mistake for me.
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