
The Book of Nonexistent Words
No se pudo agregar al carrito
Add to Cart failed.
Error al Agregar a Lista de Deseos.
Error al eliminar de la lista de deseos.
Error al añadir a tu biblioteca
Error al seguir el podcast
Error al dejar de seguir el podcast
$0.99/mes por los primeros 3 meses

Compra ahora por $24.29
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrado por:
-
John Lee
Acerca de esta escucha
The internationally acclaimed author harnesses his brilliant imagination and masterful storytelling ability to create a catalog of new words inspired by stories of real people in this wondrous book reminiscent of Italo Calvino's mesmerizing Invisible Cities.
How many times have words not been enough?
How many complex feelings don’t have a corresponding noun that properly describes them?
How many times has language left us like an archer without arrows in the labyrinth of our emotions?
Award-winning author Stefano Massini, a master of expression, made a discovery that shot new life into his writing practice. To his surprise he found that the ancient rules of language were not quite as restrictive as he had long envisioned them to be. With so many emotions and states of mind missing modern descriptors and definitions, Massini stumbled across a simple but artistry-altering idea. Instead of compromising honest expression through perfunctory verbiage, he decided language was, if anything, a flowing palette of colors he could use to paint all things. Words are meant to be invented.
To reconfirm his belief in the magic of words, Massini returned to the wondrous mechanism that has fed dictionaries from time immemorial. If he could not find the precise word he wanted, he created one. In this delightful compendium, he introduces his personal vocabulary; every chapter mentions a new word that comes from a story about a real person, from Louis XIV to an American gangster.
The Book of Nonexistent Words is a beautiful collection of linguistic origin stories wrought from the mind of an internationally renowned storytelling icon. Massini effectively liberates our human capacity for using language creatively and shows how we can embrace storytelling to fine tune our way of being in the world. Massini encourages us to be imaginative; if the language in the dictionary cannot adequately match the reality of the here and now, we must create new words that ring true.
Translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon.
©2021 Stefano Massini (P)2021 HarperCollins PublishersLos oyentes también disfrutaron...
-
The Lehman Trilogy
- A Novel
- De: Stefano Massini, Richard Dixon - translator
- Narrado por: Edoardo Ballerini
- Duración: 13 h y 41 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Spanning three generations and 150 years, The Lehman Trilogy is a moving epic that dares to tell the story of modern capitalism through the saga of the Lehman brothers and their descendants. Surprising and exciting, brilliant and inventive, Stefano Massini’s masterpiece - like Hamilton - is a story of immigration, ambition, and success; it is the story of America itself from a daring and original perspective.
-
-
Astounding!
- De Lisa Scottoline en 05-04-21
De: Stefano Massini, y otros
-
Agamemnon's Daughter
- A Novella & Stories
- De: Ismail Kadare
- Narrado por: Clinton Wade, Allan Robertson, Jeremy Arthur, y otros
- Duración: 4 h y 44 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In this spellbinding novel, written in Albania and smuggled into France a few pages at a time in the 1980s, Ismail Kadare denounces with rare force the machinery of a dictatorial regime, drawing us back to the ancient roots of tyranny in Western Civilization. During the waning years of Communism, a young worker for the Albanian state-controlled media agency narrates the story of his ill-fated love for the daughter of a high-ranking official.
-
-
Three Stories, Each Unique
- De Carol en 07-03-14
De: Ismail Kadare
-
Notes of a Native Son
- De: James Baldwin
- Narrado por: Ron Butler
- Duración: 5 h y 3 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.
-
-
Masterful Essayist
- De Andre en 09-30-16
De: James Baldwin
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- De: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrado por: Richmond Hoxie
- Duración: 9 h y 37 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- De Mel en 07-01-12
De: Milan Kundera, y otros
-
Surprised by Joy
- The Shape of My Early Life
- De: C. S. Lewis
- Narrado por: Ralph Cosham
- Duración: 6 h y 37 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In this book, C.S. Lewis tells of his search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity.
-
-
Not what I expected
- De connie en 12-21-09
De: C. S. Lewis
-
The Consolations of Philosophy
- De: Alain de Botton
- Narrado por: Simon Vance
- Duración: 6 h y 3 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Alain de Botton has performed a stunning feat: He has transformed arcane philosophy into something accessible and entertaining, useful and kind. Drawing on the work of six of the world's most brilliant thinkers, de Botton has arranged a panoply of wisdom to guide us through our most common problems.
-
-
Cheering, empathic, helpful
- De Austin en 11-11-09
De: Alain de Botton
-
The Lehman Trilogy
- A Novel
- De: Stefano Massini, Richard Dixon - translator
- Narrado por: Edoardo Ballerini
- Duración: 13 h y 41 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Spanning three generations and 150 years, The Lehman Trilogy is a moving epic that dares to tell the story of modern capitalism through the saga of the Lehman brothers and their descendants. Surprising and exciting, brilliant and inventive, Stefano Massini’s masterpiece - like Hamilton - is a story of immigration, ambition, and success; it is the story of America itself from a daring and original perspective.
-
-
Astounding!
- De Lisa Scottoline en 05-04-21
De: Stefano Massini, y otros
-
Agamemnon's Daughter
- A Novella & Stories
- De: Ismail Kadare
- Narrado por: Clinton Wade, Allan Robertson, Jeremy Arthur, y otros
- Duración: 4 h y 44 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In this spellbinding novel, written in Albania and smuggled into France a few pages at a time in the 1980s, Ismail Kadare denounces with rare force the machinery of a dictatorial regime, drawing us back to the ancient roots of tyranny in Western Civilization. During the waning years of Communism, a young worker for the Albanian state-controlled media agency narrates the story of his ill-fated love for the daughter of a high-ranking official.
-
-
Three Stories, Each Unique
- De Carol en 07-03-14
De: Ismail Kadare
-
Notes of a Native Son
- De: James Baldwin
- Narrado por: Ron Butler
- Duración: 5 h y 3 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.
-
-
Masterful Essayist
- De Andre en 09-30-16
De: James Baldwin
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- De: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrado por: Richmond Hoxie
- Duración: 9 h y 37 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
-
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- De Mel en 07-01-12
De: Milan Kundera, y otros
-
Surprised by Joy
- The Shape of My Early Life
- De: C. S. Lewis
- Narrado por: Ralph Cosham
- Duración: 6 h y 37 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In this book, C.S. Lewis tells of his search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity.
-
-
Not what I expected
- De connie en 12-21-09
De: C. S. Lewis
-
The Consolations of Philosophy
- De: Alain de Botton
- Narrado por: Simon Vance
- Duración: 6 h y 3 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Alain de Botton has performed a stunning feat: He has transformed arcane philosophy into something accessible and entertaining, useful and kind. Drawing on the work of six of the world's most brilliant thinkers, de Botton has arranged a panoply of wisdom to guide us through our most common problems.
-
-
Cheering, empathic, helpful
- De Austin en 11-11-09
De: Alain de Botton
-
Quichotte
- A Novel
- De: Salman Rushdie
- Narrado por: Vikas Adam
- Duración: 16 h y 1 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
-
-
The Best Narration I have Ever Heard
- De Bubikon en 12-12-19
De: Salman Rushdie
-
The World of Yesterday
- Memoirs of a European
- De: Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell - translator
- Narrado por: David Horovitch
- Duración: 17 h y 50 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era.
-
-
Lucidity whilst Civilization reverts to barbarism
- De none en 06-25-17
De: Stefan Zweig, y otros
-
The Roman Way
- De: Edith Hamilton
- Narrado por: Nadia May
- Duración: 6 h y 40 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
-
-
Not so bad
- De steve en 04-25-11
De: Edith Hamilton
-
Conundrum
- De: Jan Morris
- Narrado por: Roy McMillan
- Duración: 5 h y 12 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
-
-
Beautiful memoir
- De Gabriel Smith en 07-25-22
De: Jan Morris
-
The Socrates Express
- In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers
- De: Eric Weiner
- Narrado por: Eric Weiner
- Duración: 11 h y 20 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and travel in a globe-trotting pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport), he journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between to reconnect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives.
-
-
Wisdom, Wit and Warmth
- De NotTheDuchess en 08-28-20
De: Eric Weiner
-
Dear Me
- De: Peter Ustinov
- Narrado por: Peter Ustinov
- Duración: 2 h y 59 m
- Versión resumida
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Sir Peter Ustinov's beautifully crafted autobiography is told with exquisite wit and insight. From his birth in April 1921, it spans his extraordinary career as actor, playwright, film star, and director, confirming his early belief that he is 'irrevocably betrothed to laughter'. Ustinov's renowned gift for mimicry is exploited to the full in Dear Me. Eccentric relatives, school masters, sergeant majors, and manic Hollywood moguls are all brought unforgettably to life.
-
-
Highly entertaining
- De Chris Voigt en 05-10-17
De: Peter Ustinov
-
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
- De: Henry Miller
- Narrado por: Tom Perkins
- Duración: 15 h y 24 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In his great triptych The Millennium, Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise. Whence Henry Miller's title for this, one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller's life on the Big Sur, a section of the California coast where he lived for 15 years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place - one of the most colorful in the United States - and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there.
-
-
I am one of the lucky few to live here in Big Sur
- De Adam H Rosenberg en 05-18-22
De: Henry Miller
-
The Man Without Qualities
- De: Robert Musil
- Narrado por: John Telfer
- Duración: 60 h y 30 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
-
-
An unmatched intellectual epic
- De Delano en 06-23-22
De: Robert Musil
-
Immortality
- De: Milan Kundera
- Narrado por: Richmond Hoxie
- Duración: 11 h y 54 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
-
-
Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- De W Perry Hall en 01-13-14
De: Milan Kundera
-
Languages of Truth
- Essays 2003-2020
- De: Salman Rushdie
- Narrado por: Raj Ghatak, Salman Rushdie
- Duración: 13 h y 19 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
-
-
SALMAN RUSHDIE
- De chetyarbrough.blog en 07-24-21
De: Salman Rushdie
-
The Great Mistake
- A Novel
- De: Jonathan Lee
- Narrado por: Graham Halstead
- Duración: 9 h y 42 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing - on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the 13th - shook the city. Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.
-
-
Complete misfire of a biography.
- De Smith's Rock en 06-20-21
De: Jonathan Lee
-
A Month in Siena
- De: Hisham Matar
- Narrado por: Hisham Matar
- Duración: 3 h y 24 m
- Versión completa
-
General
-
Narración:
-
Historia
After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he'd had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments.
-
-
An atmospheric ramble (in the best sense!)
- De M. O. en 06-19-21
De: Hisham Matar