The White Guard

In an American Voice

By: Mikhail Bulgakov

Narrated by: Deaver Brown

Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Kiev suffers from abandonment by the Germans and takeover by the Soviet Bolsheviks. Streamlined for narration and the American ear.

Public Domain (P)2021 Deaver Brown

HORRIBLE VOICE

The person talking is horrible. I guess not budget to do this at least in a semi professional matter. Great story, very mediocre performance by the narrator.

Music ruins it

I don’t write reviews, but the repeating hard rock music in the background is awful and makes them impossible to listen to

Good story ruined by recording

I was excited about getting The White Guard as an audiobook, but the background music repeated over and over made it impossible to listen to. The introduction makes a big deal about narrating with an American accent, which is irrelevant if the narration is bad.

Hopefully someday there will be a good Audible version of this book. The White Guard describes the complexity of military forces in post-WWI Kiev: the Reds, the Whites, the Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Germans. (The Germans!? What were the Germans doing in Kiev in 1919?). Plus a lot of background that helps explain Russia-Ukraine today. The four-part Russian TV miniseries captures everything well (available on Prime Video, at least it was for a while), but this audiobook doesn't.

Worst audio book

I am a great fan of audio books. However this book should not even be rated. The narrator sounded bored and sleepy. Words were mispronounced and he could barely read a sentence without an error. It was like hearing a disinterested 8th grader. It was awful. I recommended it to my book club and really regretted it. I think it should be taken off your list of books.

bad reader

Brown is not a good reader, he can't pronounce the Russian names, and his timing is awful, Not good, the reader is bad.

The Good, The Bad, and Overall...

The Good: The price. I think I paid $1.99 I own the Russian Mini-Series on DVD and watched it with subtitles. I also own this audible book in Russian as well. The idea of offering this book in English was enticing.

The Bad: The price. You get what you pay for... What you get is the ramblings of Grandpa with the soundtrack of "Top Gun" playing in the background. In the introduction Grandpa makes it a point to let you know how brave he is by converting this great Russian novel to 'merican. He also praises the English translation e-book, which, for some unknown reason, was not used to make this audible book. In the end "The White Guard" is put through a white wash which washes out all of the Russian. So if you love Russian Literature... this version isn't for you.

Overall: It must of took a lot of effort to make this audible version so bad. I love Russian Literature. I have over 600 audible books. This isn't just about some political discourse, a besieged town, and a deep rooted military family. It's about the Russian core mindset during changing times. Amazon offers a great deal on 3 DVD's if you want to watch A Dog's Heart, Master & Margarita, and The White Guard with subtitles.