-
Agamemnon's Daughter
- A Novella & Stories
- Narrated by: Clinton Wade, Allan Robertson, Jeremy Arthur, Nicholas Techosky
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Anthologies & Short Stories
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Netanyahus
- An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
- By: Joshua Cohen
- Narrated by: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.
-
-
Phillip Roth would certainly listen!
- By Martin on 01-17-22
By: Joshua Cohen
-
Lessons from the Edge
- A Memoir
- By: Marie Yovanovitch
- Narrated by: Marie Yovanovitch
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time she became US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch had seen her share of corruption, instability, and tragedy in developing countries. But it came as a shock when, in early 2019, she was recalled from her post after a smear campaign by President Trump’s personal attorney and his associates - men operating outside of normal governmental channels, and apparently motivated by personal gain. Her courageous participation in the subsequent impeachment inquiry earned Yovanovitch the nation’s respect, and her dignified response to the president’s attacks won our hearts.
-
-
Heroic patriot's amazing story
- By Victoria Eriksson on 03-19-22
-
The Plague
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: James Jenner
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth, only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror born of nature.
-
-
Translator Please!
- By Plain English on 06-04-11
By: Albert Camus
-
The Count of Monte Cristo
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 52 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason, trumped up by jealous rivals. Incarcerated for many lonely years in the isolated and terrifying Chateau d'If near Marseille, he meticulously plans his brilliant escape and extraordinary revenge.
-
-
This is the one to spend 50 hours listening to!
- By james on 03-05-13
By: Alexandre Dumas
-
Vipers' Tangle
- By: Francois Mauriac
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this remarkable novel, Mauriac brings his extraordinary talent for probing the inmost core of the human character to what is arguably the most exciting theme in the world: the battle for the human soul. In all of literature there can be few more appalling studies of a soul devoured by pride and avarice, corroded by hatred.
-
-
those nasty rich men
- By h and l on 02-09-10
By: Francois Mauriac
-
Blood in the Forum
- A Novella of Ancient Rome
- By: Vincent B. Davis II
- Narrated by: Joshua Saxon
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rome, 133 BC. Gaius Marius is back from war in the West. They fought for the peace and prosperity of Rome, but the legions return to find the Eternal City far less peaceful and prosperous than they had hoped. People are starving, homelessness abounds, war after war has overtaxed the legions. And the revolutionary tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, thinks he has a solution for everything. Political parties are developing, the people are up in arms, the senate is enraged. And Tiberius is at the center of it all.
-
-
Well done, makes history come alive
- By Gail N. on 12-20-19
-
The Netanyahus
- An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
- By: Joshua Cohen
- Narrated by: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.
-
-
Phillip Roth would certainly listen!
- By Martin on 01-17-22
By: Joshua Cohen
-
Lessons from the Edge
- A Memoir
- By: Marie Yovanovitch
- Narrated by: Marie Yovanovitch
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time she became US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch had seen her share of corruption, instability, and tragedy in developing countries. But it came as a shock when, in early 2019, she was recalled from her post after a smear campaign by President Trump’s personal attorney and his associates - men operating outside of normal governmental channels, and apparently motivated by personal gain. Her courageous participation in the subsequent impeachment inquiry earned Yovanovitch the nation’s respect, and her dignified response to the president’s attacks won our hearts.
-
-
Heroic patriot's amazing story
- By Victoria Eriksson on 03-19-22
-
The Plague
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: James Jenner
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth, only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror born of nature.
-
-
Translator Please!
- By Plain English on 06-04-11
By: Albert Camus
-
The Count of Monte Cristo
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 52 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason, trumped up by jealous rivals. Incarcerated for many lonely years in the isolated and terrifying Chateau d'If near Marseille, he meticulously plans his brilliant escape and extraordinary revenge.
-
-
This is the one to spend 50 hours listening to!
- By james on 03-05-13
By: Alexandre Dumas
-
Vipers' Tangle
- By: Francois Mauriac
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this remarkable novel, Mauriac brings his extraordinary talent for probing the inmost core of the human character to what is arguably the most exciting theme in the world: the battle for the human soul. In all of literature there can be few more appalling studies of a soul devoured by pride and avarice, corroded by hatred.
-
-
those nasty rich men
- By h and l on 02-09-10
By: Francois Mauriac
-
Blood in the Forum
- A Novella of Ancient Rome
- By: Vincent B. Davis II
- Narrated by: Joshua Saxon
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rome, 133 BC. Gaius Marius is back from war in the West. They fought for the peace and prosperity of Rome, but the legions return to find the Eternal City far less peaceful and prosperous than they had hoped. People are starving, homelessness abounds, war after war has overtaxed the legions. And the revolutionary tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, thinks he has a solution for everything. Political parties are developing, the people are up in arms, the senate is enraged. And Tiberius is at the center of it all.
-
-
Well done, makes history come alive
- By Gail N. on 12-20-19
-
Hostage to the Devil
- The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans
- By: Malachi Martin
- Narrated by: Castor Corvus
- Length: 20 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One-on-one with Satan. A chilling and highly convincing account of possession and exorcism in modern America, hailed by NBC Radio as "one of the most stirring books on the contemporary scene."
-
-
Could have done without pornographic details
- By Youth in Asia on 05-27-20
By: Malachi Martin
-
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians
- A Novel
- By: H. G. Parry
- Narrated by: Andrew Kingston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the Age of Enlightenment - of new and magical political movements, from the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France, to the weather mage Toussaint L'Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic among commoners in Britain and abolition throughout its colonies overseas. But amid all of the upheaval of the early modern world, there is an unknown force inciting all of human civilization into violent conflict.
-
-
Could have been better
- By E. Thiessen on 08-12-21
By: H. G. Parry
-
The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
-
-
worth the wait
- By L. Kerr on 06-01-20
By: Thomas Mann
-
A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Tim McInnerny
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars, their destinies remain the same....
-
-
AD 2016
- By Warren on 08-24-20
By: John Boyne
-
The Great Mistake
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Lee
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Perfect Book
- By Amazon Customer on 07-23-21
By: Jonathan Lee
-
The Dark Tower, and Other Stories
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal listening for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.
-
-
Buyer beware... incomplete works
- By Breezybealle on 01-19-20
By: C. S. Lewis
-
She Who Became the Sun
- By: Shelley Parker-Chan
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
-
-
Page turner if there were audio pages
- By eyesla on 08-14-21
-
Bosnian Chronicle
- A Novel
- By: Ivo Andric
- Narrated by: Helen Lloyd
- Length: 20 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the town of Travnik, Bosnian Chronicle presents the struggle for supremacy in a region that stubbornly refuses to submit to any outsider. The era is Napoleonic and the novel, both in its historical scope and psychological subtlety, Tolstoyan. In its portrayal of conflict and fierce ethnic loyalties, the story is also eerily relevant. Ottoman viziers, French consuls, and Austrian plenipotentiaries are consumed by an endless game of diplomacy and double-dealing.
-
-
Classic. Outstanding.
- By Nevresa on 07-27-17
By: Ivo Andric
-
Turning Darkness into Light
- By: Marie Brennan
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik, Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst, Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study. When Lord Gleinheigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war.
-
-
Marie Brennan does it again!
- By Kevin Potter on 10-23-19
By: Marie Brennan
-
A Passage North
- A Novel
- By: Anuk Arudpragasam
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Passage North begins with a message from out of the blue: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother’s caretaker, Rani, has died under unexpected circumstances—found at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind.
-
-
@ Jayantha Hettigama
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-21
-
The Empress
- A Novel
- By: Laura Martínez-Belli, Simon Bruni - translator
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1863. Napoleon III has installed a foreign monarch in Mexico to squash the current regime. Maximilian von Habsburg of Austria accepts the emperor’s crown. But it is his wife, the brilliant and ambitious Princess Charlotte, who throws herself passionately into the role. Known to the people as Empress Carlota, she rules deftly from behind the scenes while her husband contents himself with philandering and decorating the palace. But Carlota bears a guilty secret.
-
-
The Empress of Mexico
- By Fran on 02-07-21
By: Laura Martínez-Belli, and others
-
A Month in Siena
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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!)
- By M. O. on 06-19-21
By: Hisham Matar
Publisher's Summary
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. When he witness the ghostly image of Agamemnon-the Ancient Greek king who sacrificed his own daughter for reasons of State-on the reviewing stand during a May Day celebration, he begins to suspect the full catastrophe of his devotion. Also included are "The Blinding Order", a parable of the Ottoman Empire about the uses of terror in authoritarian regimes, and "The Great Wall”, a chilling duet between a Chinese official and a soldier in the invading army of the Tamerlane.
More from the same
What listeners say about Agamemnon's Daughter
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carol
- 07-03-14
Three Stories, Each Unique
The title novella in this anthology by Man Booker Prize recipient Ismail Kadare is a reference to the Greek king Agamemnon, who lured his daughter Iphigenia to the altar with promises of marriage to the hero Achilles, only to seize her and sacrifice her to the gods so that his army would be allowed to sail away and attack Troy. The narrator of Kadare’s novella, a broadcast journalist in totalitarian socialist Albania during the early 80s, finds the ancient story of Iphigenia strangely resonant. He is hurting because the woman he loves has recently left him, allegedly because her father did not find their relationship politically expedient. He has also received a last-minute ticket to a grandstand seat at the May Day Parade--a high honor he cannot refuse--and his romantic musings as he walks to claim his unsought “exalted” position are interspersed with paranoid reflections as to the meaning behind the anonymous invitation. Is it really a reward (and if so, for what?), or is it a trap?
“Agamemnon’s Daughter” is Kadare’s no doubt autobiographical mirror of the conditions prevailing in Albania from 1944-1985, under the rule of dictator Enver Hoxha (referred to in the story as the “Supreme Guide”). During that time Albania achieved unprecedented economic and agricultural success; the people were said to be “tax-free”; education (within rigidly prescribed socialist contexts) was available to all and literacy skyrocketed. By the May Day described, it is also a society where personal privacy, independence, family loyalty, and love itself have been sacrificed to absolute political authority. It is all the more chilling for having been drawn from reality.
The second story, “The Blinding Order,” explores the paranoid psychology that grips people when a “witch hunt” is on; in this case, the hunt involves seeking out those who possess the “evil eye.” It was an original approach to a topic that’s been covered many times.
I found the last and shortest story, “The Great Wall,” to be the most interesting. Set in the 14th century, it documents the internal musings of two men, one an engineer called to work on shoring up China’s Great Wall against an attack by Tamarlane’s army; the second man is a scout for that army. It’s not exactly action-packed, but it’s an interesting take on fear, conquest, and psyching out the enemy.
This collection was an unusually literary choice for me; I tend to listen mostly to genre fiction, which these stories definitely are not. If this had been a novel I probably would have found it, well, boring, but the length of these pieces made each of them an intriguing change of pace. I was a little put off by the coarse, even misogynisitic, language Kadare uses when describing women sexually, but aside from those brief instances I found the writing admirable. All in all, a worthy selection, especially for anyone interested in political history.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- cd-555
- 03-12-22
Good
Three dystopian stories. The first one is the prequel to the novel The Successor according to Wikipedia. It tells some fictional stories about communism in Albania. In the second one, set in earlier times, the sultan decides people possessing ‘the evil eye’ to be blinded. The third one, the weakest in my view, or I didn’t understand it, is about the wall of China. Very good performance and translation.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Aline Tucker
- 09-13-21
Very eye opening !
So interesting but you have to be ready for an intellectual encounter. I am continuing to research and learn about this era. We will never be through with events like these, unfortunately.