Faust

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 30 mins)
• By Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Common (translator)
• Narrated By John Lee
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the most famous and influential work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The work is a philosophical novel in which the character of Zarathustra, a religious prophet-like figure, delivers a series of lessons and sermons in a Biblical style that articulate the central ideas of Nietzsche's mature thought.

The World as Will And Idea, Volume 1

• UNABRIDGED (20 hrs and 31 mins)
• By Arthur Schopenhauer
• Narrated By Leighton Pugh

Schopenhauer was just 30 when his magnum opus, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, a work of considerable learning and innovation of thought, first appeared in 1818.

Much to his chagrin and puzzlement (so convinced was he of its merits), it didn't have an immediate effect on European philosophy, views and culture. It was only decades later that it was recognised as one of the major intellectual landmarks of the 19th century.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 31 mins)
• By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Narrated By Leighton Pugh
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Werther, a sensitive young artist, finds himself in Wahlheim, a quiet, attractive village in Germany where he seeks solace from the turmoils of love. It is a young spring, and he hopes that arcadian solitude will prove a genial balm to his mind. But his romantic tendency rules otherwise, and he falls in love with Charlotte - Lotte - even though he knows she is affianced to another.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Narrated By Don Hagen
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The Sorrows of Young Werther is a loosely based autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was first published in 1774 and is one of the most famous-and infamous-works in the history of literature. Werther, a sensitive young man falls in love with Lotte, a sweet-natured girl he meets while visitng an idyllic German village. Although Lotte is betrothed to Albert, Werther’s infatuation with her torments him to the point of despair and suicide.

Candide

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 21 mins)
• By Voltaire
• Narrated By Jeff Moon
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Ever since 1759, when Voltaire wrote Candide in ridicule of the notion that this is the best of all possible worlds, this world has been a gayer place for audiences. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or six generations have found that its laughter does not grow old.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 57 mins)
• By C. G. Jung
• Narrated By James Cameron Stewart

In 1957, four years before his death, Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist and psychologist, began writing his life story. But what started as an exercise in autobiography soon morphed into an altogether more profound undertaking.

Italian Journey

• UNABRIDGED (18 hrs and 57 mins)
• By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Narrated By Charlton Griffin

Goethe was probably the greatest universal genius who ever lived. Although known primarily as a poet, playright, and novelist, he was also known for his work in anatomy, botany, color, art criticism, and jurisprudence. Many people are deterred from attempting to read anything by Goethe because of his extremely penetrating intelligence and dense prose. But his travel diary, Italian Journey, is by far easier to digest than anything else by him.

Steppenwolf

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 46 mins)
• By Hermann Hesse
• Narrated By Peter Weller

Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine.

Beyond Good and Evil

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Friedrich Nietzsche
• Narrated By Steven Crossley
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, first published in 1886, presents a scathing critique of traditional morality and attacks previous philosophers for their blind acceptance of Christian ideals of virtue. As an alternative to what he viewed as the illogical and irrelevant philosophy of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche argues for the importance of imagination, self-assertion, danger, and originality for genuine philosophy.

The Confessions

• UNABRIDGED (25 hrs and 2 mins)
• By Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Narrated By David McCallion

Considered to be the first autobiography of its kind, The Confessions is two distinct books published seven years apart and covers the first 53 years of the author's life. The autobiographies of the time delved primarily into the individual's religious life, but Jean-Jacques Rousseau wanted to do something different. Instead of focusing on faith, he wrote about his thoughts and misadventures.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 55 mins)
• By Christopher Marlowe
• Narrated By full cast

Christopher Marlowe's play about a man who sells his soul to the devil is not only one of the first of many works to explore this theme but also one of the most startling. Eschewing the usual division of the drama into acts, it presents the story of Faustus' fall in a series of apparently disconnected scenes. However, the integrity of the drama is maintained by the remorseless unraveling of Faustus' fortunes as he approaches his inevitable damnation.

The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso

• ORIGINAL (2 hrs and 50 mins)
• By Dante Alighieri, Stephen Wyatt
• Narrated By Blake Ritson, John Hurt, David Warner, and others

Blake Ritson, David Warner, Hattie Morahan and John Hurt star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Dante's epic poem. Inferno: Thirty-five year old Dante finds himself in the middle of a dark wood, in extreme personal and spiritual crisis. Hope of rescue appears in the form of the venerable poet Virgil, now a shade himself, who offers to lead Dante on an odyssey through the afterlife, beginning in the terrifying depths of Hell.

Plato's Phaedrus

• UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 1 min)
• By Plato
• Narrated By Ray Childs

Phaedrus lures Socrates outside the walls of Athens, where he seldom goes, by promising to share a new work by his friend and mentor, Lysias, a famous writer of speeches. This dialogue provides a powerful example of the dialectical writing that Plato uses to manifest ideas that are essential to human existence and to living a good life. Phaedrus shows how oral and written forms of language relate to each other and to philosophy.

The Oresteia

• ORIGINAL (3 hrs and 37 mins)
• By Aeschylus
• Narrated By full cast

In The Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. The action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War, only to be treacherously slain by his own wife. It ends with the trial of their son, Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge her treachery - a trial with the goddess Athena as judge, the god Apollo as defense attorney, and, as prosecutors, relentless avenging demons called The Furies.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 59 mins)
• By Friedrich Nietzsche
• Narrated By Kevin Theis
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

When Zarathustra was 30 years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for 10 years did not weary of it.

Ulysses

• UNABRIDGED (27 hrs and 16 mins)
• By James Joyce
• Narrated By Jim Norton
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Alexander Pushkin, James E. Falen (translator)
• Narrated By Raphael Corkhill

Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men - Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast, and a stylized Pushkin himself - and the fates and affections of three women - Tatyana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, and Pushkin's mercurial Muse.

Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 14 mins)
• By John Milton
• Narrated By Charlton Griffin

Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold testimonial to his mental powers in old age. And, since he had gone completely blind in 1652, 15 years prior to Paradise Lost, he dictated it and all his other works to his daughter.