-
An Area of Darkness
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
An Area of Darkness
Buy for $15.56
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
India: A Wounded Civilization
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 19
In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Insightful & informative!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-03-24
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
India: A Million Mutinies Now
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 24 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 16
Arising out of Naipaul’s lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than 50 years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society - the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ
- By JK on 08-15-21
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A Way in the World
- A Novel
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 54
Spanning continents and centuries and defying literary categories, A Way in the World tells intersecting stories whose protagonists include the disgraced and half-demented Sir Walter Raleigh, who seeks El Dorado in the New World; the 19th-century insurgent Francisco Miranda, who becomes entangled in his own fantasies and borrowed ideas; and the doomed Blair, a present-day Caribbean revolutionary stranded in East Africa.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
ugh!
- By Norman Johnson on 09-16-18
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 572
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 378
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A House for Mr. Biswas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 333
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 282
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 282
A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
- By Christopher on 01-04-19
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
The Enigma of Arrival
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 104
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
A noveau novel
- By Chike M Nzerue on 05-02-20
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
India: A Wounded Civilization
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 19
In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Insightful & informative!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-03-24
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
India: A Million Mutinies Now
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 24 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 16
Arising out of Naipaul’s lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than 50 years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society - the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ
- By JK on 08-15-21
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A Way in the World
- A Novel
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 54
Spanning continents and centuries and defying literary categories, A Way in the World tells intersecting stories whose protagonists include the disgraced and half-demented Sir Walter Raleigh, who seeks El Dorado in the New World; the 19th-century insurgent Francisco Miranda, who becomes entangled in his own fantasies and borrowed ideas; and the doomed Blair, a present-day Caribbean revolutionary stranded in East Africa.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
ugh!
- By Norman Johnson on 09-16-18
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 572
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 378
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
A House for Mr. Biswas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 333
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 282
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 282
A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
- By Christopher on 01-04-19
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
The Enigma of Arrival
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 104
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
A noveau novel
- By Chike M Nzerue on 05-02-20
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
The Anarchy
- The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,146
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 952
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 947
The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
excellent book but awkward narration
- By TexasVC on 02-25-20
-
Gandhi
- The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948
- By: Ramachandra Guha
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 36 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
This volume opens with Mohandas Gandhi's arrival in Bombay in January 1915 and takes us through his epic struggles over the next three decades. In reconstructing Gandhi's life and work, author Ramachandra Guha has drawn on 60 different archival collections. Using this wealth of material, Guha creates a portrait of Gandhi and of those closest to him that illuminates the complexity inside his thinking, his motives, his actions, and their outcomes as he engaged with every important aspect of social and public life in the India of his time.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Well researched and heart touching
- By M Umar Khan on 02-01-21
By: Ramachandra Guha
-
Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,001
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,589
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,574
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
-
A Fine Balance
- By: Rohinton Mistry
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,771
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,358
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,351
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers—a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village—will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Read this book if your heart is made of steal
- By Amazon Shopper on 03-23-08
By: Rohinton Mistry
-
The Great Railway Bazaar
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 503
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 430
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 424
The Great Railway Bazaar is Paul Theroux's account of his epic journey by rail through Asia. Filled with evocative names of legendary train routes - the Direct-Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Delhi Mail from Jaipur, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Hikari Super Express to Kyoto, and the Trans-Siberian Express - it describes the many places, cultures, sights and sounds he experienced and the fascinating people he met.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Just about as good as it gets...
- By david d. on 03-27-11
By: Paul Theroux
-
Eighteen Days in October
- The Yom Kippur War and How It Created the Modern Middle East
- By: Uri Kaufman
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
October 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict that shaped the modern Middle East. The War was a trauma for Israel, a dangerous superpower showdown, and, following the oil embargo, a pivotal reordering of the global economic order. The Jewish State came shockingly close to defeat. After the war, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned in disgrace, and a 9/11-style commission investigated the "debacle." But, argues Uri Kaufman, from the perspective of a half century, the War can be seen as a pivotal victory for Israel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
gripping history
- By Alex Troy on 11-12-23
By: Uri Kaufman
-
Collapse
- The Fall of the Soviet Union
- By: Vladislav M. Zubok
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 23 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 406
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 352
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 350
In 1945, the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong, 5,000 nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward, the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the 20th century.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Hopefully Not Prescient
- By Joshua on 01-29-22
-
Imperial Twilight
- The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
- By: Stephen R. Platt
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 847
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 717
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 713
As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars
- By Carl A. Gallozzi on 09-05-18
By: Stephen R. Platt
-
Siddhartha
- By: Hermann Hesse, Joachim Neugroschel - translator
- Narrated by: Firdous Bamji
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,840
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,312
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,309
Siddhartha is Nobel Prize-winning author Hermann Hesse's most famous and influential work, a novel of self-exploration that will linger in your mind and spirit for a lifetime. A young man, blessed with loving parents and a safe home in a world where want and neglect abound, leaves this haven in search of himself.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Very Interesting to Listen
- By Ramanujam on 07-23-08
By: Hermann Hesse, and others
-
India
- A Portrait
- By: Patrick French
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 77
Second only to China in the magnitude of its economic miracle and second to none in its potential to shape the new century, India is fast undergoing one of the most momentous transformations the world has ever seen. In this dazzlingly panoramic book, Patrick French chronicles that epic change, telling human stories to explain a larger national narrative. Melding on-the-ground reports with a deep knowledge of history, French exposes the cultural foundations of India’s political, economic and social complexities.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
An Epic Book by Award-Winning Author
- By morton on 10-31-11
By: Patrick French
-
Istanbul
- Memories and the City
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 214
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 178
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 182
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Terrible pronunciation
- By K. Jaynes on 02-25-18
By: Orhan Pamuk
-
Phenomenology of Spirit
- By: G. W. F. Hegel, A. V. Miller - translator, J. N. Findlay
- Narrated by: David DeVries
- Length: 29 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 149
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 118
Perhaps one of the most revolutionary works of philosophy ever presented, The Phenomenology of Spirit is Hegel's 1807 work that is in numerous ways extraordinary. A myriad of topics are discussed, and explained in such a harmoniously complex way that the method has been termed Hegelian dialectic. Ultimately, the work as a whole is a remarkable study of the mind's growth from its direct awareness to scientific philosophy, proving to be a difficult yet highly influential and enduring work.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
My favorite audible book of the 700 I've rated
- By Gary on 01-02-16
By: G. W. F. Hegel, and others
Publisher's summary
A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India.
Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.
Related to this topic
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 572
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 378
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
On the Plain of Snakes
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 133
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 133
Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A 40-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
A pedantic, poorly narrated, 20 hour lecture
- By Birdshot on 11-16-19
By: Paul Theroux
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
-
The Hopkins Manuscript
- A Novel
- By: R.C. Sherriff
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton, Lameece Issaq
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Edgar Hopkins is a retired math teacher with a strong sense of self-importance, whose greatest pride is winning poultry-breeding contests. When not meticulously caring for his Bantam, Edgar is an active member of the British Lunar Society. Thanks to that affiliation, Edgar becomes one of the first people to learn that the moon is on a collision course with the earth. Members of the society are sworn to secrecy, but eventually the moon begins to loom so large in the sky that the truth can no longer be denied.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
1939 or present?
- By TimePresentTimePast on 01-23-23
By: R.C. Sherriff
-
The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 164
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 139
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 141
A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Overly ambitious
- By Placeholder on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 572
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 378
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
On the Plain of Snakes
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 133
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 133
Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A 40-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
A pedantic, poorly narrated, 20 hour lecture
- By Birdshot on 11-16-19
By: Paul Theroux
-
The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
-
My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
-
The Hopkins Manuscript
- A Novel
- By: R.C. Sherriff
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton, Lameece Issaq
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Edgar Hopkins is a retired math teacher with a strong sense of self-importance, whose greatest pride is winning poultry-breeding contests. When not meticulously caring for his Bantam, Edgar is an active member of the British Lunar Society. Thanks to that affiliation, Edgar becomes one of the first people to learn that the moon is on a collision course with the earth. Members of the society are sworn to secrecy, but eventually the moon begins to loom so large in the sky that the truth can no longer be denied.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
1939 or present?
- By TimePresentTimePast on 01-23-23
By: R.C. Sherriff
-
The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 164
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 139
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 141
A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Overly ambitious
- By Placeholder on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
-
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 181
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 153
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 152
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
-
The Library of Legends
- A Novel
- By: Janie Chang
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 178
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 163
China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, 19-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than 100 students, faculty, and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful and Umique!
- By D. Fields on 02-18-22
By: Janie Chang
-
Sanshiro
- Penguin Classics
- By: Natsume Soseki, Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin
- Narrated by: Andrew Koji
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro's doomed innocence, the novel comes to life. Sanshiro is also penetrating social and cultural commentary.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
This story had no point.
- By icelandicponies on 12-30-21
By: Natsume Soseki, and others
-
The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 130
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 110
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
-
Exile and the Kingdom
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Short Stories
- By Sergen on 08-28-24
By: Albert Camus
-
Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,059
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 938
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 931
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
-
Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 189
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 150
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 150
One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
America Is in the Heart
- By: Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo - foreword, E. San Juan Jr. - introduction, and others
- Narrated by: Ramon de Ocampo
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
-
Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
-
The Beautiful and Damned
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 924
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 751
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 756
Published in 1922, Fitzgerald's second novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
i loved it
- By Emily on 01-20-05
-
A Suitable Boy (Dramatised)
- By: Vikram Seth
- Narrated by: Ayesha Dharker, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 346
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 283
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 277
A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
would prefer unabridged naration
- By Tamshine on 07-07-11
By: Vikram Seth
-
Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 54
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
India: A Wounded Civilization
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 19
In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Insightful & informative!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-03-24
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
India: A Million Mutinies Now
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 24 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 16
Arising out of Naipaul’s lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than 50 years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society - the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ
- By JK on 08-15-21
By: V. S. Naipaul
-
In a Free State
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam, Neil Shah, Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 116
-
Performance