-
A Handful of Dust
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Premium Plus
$14.95 a month
Buy for $20.65
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
-
-
Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By Gypsi on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Scoop
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Scoop, surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure", Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism and how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily's Beast's" more accoladed overseas reporter.
-
-
Love this story, easy listen.
- By Elena on 08-24-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Vieux Carré Blonde on 12-12-12
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Sword of Honor
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 24 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This trilogy about World War II, largely based on his own experiences as an army officer, is the crowning achievement of Evelyn Waugh's career. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him.
-
-
At least one chapter missing
- By Sviatoslav on 08-17-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Loved One
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday - and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art.
-
-
Hilarious funny.
- By James Lucier on 05-29-16
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Black Mischief
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.
-
-
Raucous, Not Racist
- By John on 10-01-16
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
-
-
Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By Gypsi on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Scoop
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Scoop, surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure", Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism and how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily's Beast's" more accoladed overseas reporter.
-
-
Love this story, easy listen.
- By Elena on 08-24-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Vieux Carré Blonde on 12-12-12
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Sword of Honor
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 24 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This trilogy about World War II, largely based on his own experiences as an army officer, is the crowning achievement of Evelyn Waugh's career. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him.
-
-
At least one chapter missing
- By Sviatoslav on 08-17-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Loved One
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday - and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art.
-
-
Hilarious funny.
- By James Lucier on 05-29-16
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Black Mischief
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.
-
-
Raucous, Not Racist
- By John on 10-01-16
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Put Out More Flags
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life - his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour - as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security.
-
-
Wickedly Funny
- By Lilly K on 07-25-19
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Darkness at Noon
- By: Arthur Koestler
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fictional portrayal of an aging revolutionary, this novel is a powerful commentary on the nightmare politics of the troubled 20th century. Born in Hungary in 1905, a defector from the Communist Party in 1938, and then arrested in both Spain and France for his political views, Arthur Koestler writes from a wealth of personal experience.
-
-
Disturbing Commentary
- By Roy on 10-23-10
By: Arthur Koestler
-
Men at Arms
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Christian Rodska
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade that seriously blots his Halberdier copybook. Men at Arms is the first novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback.
-
-
Supposedly Humorous
- By Kindle Customer on 11-13-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- By: Thornton Wilder
- Narrated by: Sam Waterston
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wilder's stories consistently explored the connections between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, always returning to fundamental questions about the meaning of life. This Pulitzer Prize-winning tale concerns the lives of five people who fall to their deaths from a Peruvian rope bridge in 1714. A humble Franciscan, Brother Juniper, witnesses the accident and determines to learn about the lives of the victims in order to find out whether this accident happened by chance or by plan.
-
-
Excellent Story, But Poor Audiobook Technically
- By RKL on 11-15-13
By: Thornton Wilder
-
The Heart of the Matter
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scobie, a police officer in a West African colony, is a good and honest man. But when he falls in love, he is forced into a betrayal of everything that he has ever believed in, and his struggle to maintain the happiness of two women destroys him.
-
-
Starts Very Slowly then Boom!
- By Michael on 05-21-17
By: Graham Greene
-
Helena
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Helena is the intelligent, horse-mad daughter of a British chieftan who is suddenly betrothed to the warrior who becomes the Roman emperor Constantius. She spends her life seeking truth in the religions, mythologies, and philosophies of the declining ancient world. This she eventually finds in Christianity-and literally in the Cross of Christ.The Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, made the historic pilgrimage to Palestine and built churches at Bethlehem and Olivet.
-
-
And There Alone is Hope
- By John on 04-19-19
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
- By: Rainer Maria Rilke
- Narrated by: Jamie Parker
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has been described as an anti-novel. It is set in Paris in the period just before the First World War, but it presents a bleaker milieu than that described by Proust. The language is terse, the atmosphere painful, the images uncompromising. Rilke drew on the short period he spent in Paris in 1903 where, in contrast to the rural circumstances in which he had lived before, he found the underbelly of urban life distressing.
-
A Passage to India
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Aziz is a young Muslim physician in the British Indian town of Chandrapore. One evening he comes across an English woman, Mrs. Moore, in the courtyard of a local mosque; she and her younger travelling companion Adela are disappointed by claustrophobic British colonial culture and wish to see something of the 'real' India. But when Aziz kindly offers to take them on a tour of the Marabar caves with his close friend Cyril Fielding, the trip results in a shocking accusation....
-
-
Poor sound quality
- By Rochelle on 01-02-14
By: E. M. Forster
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
-
-
Wonderful story, wonderful reader
- By Sarah C on 02-07-11
By: Saul Bellow
-
Appointment in Samarra
- Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
- By: John O'Hara, Charles McGrath (introduction)
- Narrated by: Christian Camargo
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
-
-
O'Hara's Best?
- By Steve M on 10-01-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
-
Under the Volcano
- A Novel
- By: Malcolm Lowry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the Day of the Dead, in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic and ruined man, is fatefully living out his last day, drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.
-
-
Excellent...but not for everyone
- By Melinda on 12-07-10
By: Malcolm Lowry
-
Nostromo
- By: Joseph Conrad
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nostromo is a colorful and adventurous tale set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana. In the midst of a revolution, the citizens of Costaguana live under a brutal dictatorship of Ribiera, a ruthless leader kept in power through foreigners and their dark money. The oligarch government has become so corrupt that the citizens of Costaguana have had enough. In fear of losing his wealth, Charles Gould, the leader of a wealthy family, asks Nostromo for help in getting his vast silver fortune out of the city.
-
-
Narrator thrusts listener from the narrative
- By Silvia J. on 02-18-20
By: Joseph Conrad
Publisher's Summary
After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last has grown bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set.
In a novel that combines tragedy, comedy, and savage irony, Evelyn Waugh indelibly captures the irresponsible mood of the "crazy and sterile generation" between the wars.
More from the same
What listeners say about A Handful of Dust
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Julian
- 12-21-17
Scenes from a marriage
The sad and bitter tale of a man who, like Job, has everything he cares about taken away from him. Tony Last is the English squire through and through but his very name sounds the doom of his dynasty. Waugh uses his own experience as a cuckold to show the inexorable triumph of the new, commercial England over the older, subtler ways of life rooted in the great country houses and their estates. Andrew Sachs renders an already restrained tale with just the right amount of buttoned-up tension, making the most of the rare moments of black humour. Tony's grieving scenes after his great tragedy pierce the heart with their hopeless irony, as we know full well his wife will not care a jot. Waugh has few greater moments than this.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- S. Barnes
- 03-03-17
Shatteringly brilliant.
What did you like most about A Handful of Dust?
The way the story takes you by surprise. What seems like another lively and witty portrait of the Bright Young Things turns into something bleak and grave.
What did you like best about this story?
The writing is quite beautiful. Waugh at his best, in my opinion.
What about Andrew Sachs’s performance did you like?
Andrew Sachs' performance is absolutely outstanding. The depth (and where needed - airiness) and nuance he gives each character, his timing and his reading of the text is both enlightening and moving.
If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Be careful what you wish for!
Any additional comments?
My favourite audibook so far!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- arirulz
- 09-12-19
A brilliant narration of a gripping book.
Andrew Sachs did a great job reading this English classic. Beautifully written sparse prose that said so much.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Fitz
- 11-07-17
Superb
Waugh's lacerating tragi-comedy of 30's society and a genteel marriage falling apart is brilliantly read by Andrew Sachs.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Paul D
- 04-10-19
A good listen
My first experience of the author and a pleasant surprise. Despite being filled with despicable characters or another time and social class there was enough to make it a page turner, if only in the hope that they would reap their deserts. Certainly well construct and written to make the story and characters believable. I found the first half of the book much better than the second and until halfway considered this a very rare 5 star listen. I felt that the second half lost its way and really didn't flow from the first part, with a very dissatisfying conclusion.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- RobS
- 09-24-18
Rather dated but an interesting ending
Most of the book is a lightly scathing look at upper class bourgeois society between the wars. The best bit is later on though when Tony is ill and starts hallucinating, that's very funny!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Susan Whitehead
- 06-01-17
A Handful of Dust
Brilliantly read by Andrew Sachs, he reads so clearly and with feeling. Interesting story with a twist at the end