-
Into the War
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
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
Into the War
Buy for $9.45
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Under the Jaguar Sun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1
These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico's fiery chiles and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, "Under the Jaguar Sun". In "A King Listens", a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant's thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. "The Name, the Nose" drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Hermit in Paris
- Autobiographical Writings
- By: Martin McLaughlin translator, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era's most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II, traces the course of his literary career, and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960.
By: Martin McLaughlin translator, and others
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Collection of Sand
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Italo Calvino's unbounded curiosity and masterly imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, the last of his works published during his lifetime. Here he applies his graceful intellect to the delights of the visual world in essays on subjects ranging from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful prose, topics, and narration
- By Drew on 06-02-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 29
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Under the Jaguar Sun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1
These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico's fiery chiles and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, "Under the Jaguar Sun". In "A King Listens", a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant's thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. "The Name, the Nose" drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Hermit in Paris
- Autobiographical Writings
- By: Martin McLaughlin translator, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era's most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II, traces the course of his literary career, and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960.
By: Martin McLaughlin translator, and others
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Collection of Sand
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Italo Calvino's unbounded curiosity and masterly imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, the last of his works published during his lifetime. Here he applies his graceful intellect to the delights of the visual world in essays on subjects ranging from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful prose, topics, and narration
- By Drew on 06-02-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 29
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Difficult Loves
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 3
In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Why Read the Classics?
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 4
Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here - spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism - are 36 immediately relevant, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Numbers in the Dark
- And Other Stories
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition. Here are speculative stories on life in the digital age, genre-bending wonders, and “impossible interviews” with the likes of Montezuma and a Neanderthal.
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Cloven Viscount
- Translated by Archibald Colquhoun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 40
In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures. In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bissected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. The two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, fight a bloody duel, and achieve a miraculous resolution.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Mr. Palomar
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This is an AMAZING Book!
- By The on 09-13-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 8
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Uneven but worth listening to if you like Calvino
- By Daniel on 02-21-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
Italian Folktales
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 28 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Chosen as one of the New York Times's 10 best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
At Last: Unbridled Delight
- By John on 06-12-20
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Complete Cosmicomics
- Translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks, & William Weaver
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator, Tim Parks - translator, and others
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
Italo Calvino's beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these 34 dazzling stories - collected here in one definitive anthology - relate complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Moments of Greatness = Worth the Read
- By Amazon Customer on 08-06-18
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Fantastic Tales
- Visionary and Everyday
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 23 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 5
Vampires, ghosts, and other horrors abound in this collection of 19th-century fantastic literature, selected and edited by Italo Calvino, a 20th-century master of the speculative.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Unexpected pleasure
- By Grant on 11-06-20
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Divine Comedy
- By: Clive James - translator, Dante Alighieri
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,736
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,518
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,514
Renowned poet and critic Clive James presents the crowning achievement of his career: a monumental translation into English verse of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy is the precursor of modern literature, and this translation - decades in the making - gives us the entire epic as a single, coherent and compulsively listenable lyric poem. Written in the early 14th century and completed in 1321, the year of Dante’s death, The Divine Comedy is perhaps the greatest work of epic poetry ever composed.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Brilliant!
- By Tad Davis on 10-18-13
By: Clive James - translator, and others
-
The Remains of the Day
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,582
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 2,210
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,197
This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of a butler named Stevens. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful and ever relevant
- By bbots on 07-04-20
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
Doctor Zhivago
- By: Boris Pasternak, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator, Richard Pevear - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 738
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 634
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 630
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Russian Philosophical Feast
- By Syd Young on 02-16-13
By: Boris Pasternak, and others
Publisher's summary
"This book deals both with a transition from adolescence into youth and with a move from peace to war: as for very many other people, for the protagonist of this book 'entry into life' and 'entry into war' coincide." - from the Author's Note
These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades.
The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout.
Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction. It offers both a glimpse of this writer's extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice.
More from the same
Narrator
Related to this topic
-
Doctor Zhivago
- By: Boris Pasternak, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator, Richard Pevear - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 738
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 634
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 630
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Russian Philosophical Feast
- By Syd Young on 02-16-13
By: Boris Pasternak, and others
-
All for Nothing
- By: Walter Kempowski, Anthea Bell - translator, Jenny Erpenbeck - introduction
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat, and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish 12-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors - a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
All for Nothing
- By Lynn on 03-16-19
By: Walter Kempowski, and others
-
Chronicle in Stone
- A Novel
- By: Ismail Kadare
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 63
Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful
- By Shqipe on 05-30-15
By: Ismail Kadare
-
The Kindly Ones
- By: Jonathan Littell
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 39 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 292
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 218
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 217
The chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Office politics in hell
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 04-02-13
By: Jonathan Littell
-
Nocturne
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Blech
- By Caroline H. on 02-20-11
By: Diane Armstrong
-
All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
-
Doctor Zhivago
- By: Boris Pasternak, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator, Richard Pevear - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 738
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 634
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 630
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Russian Philosophical Feast
- By Syd Young on 02-16-13
By: Boris Pasternak, and others
-
All for Nothing
- By: Walter Kempowski, Anthea Bell - translator, Jenny Erpenbeck - introduction
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat, and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish 12-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors - a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
All for Nothing
- By Lynn on 03-16-19
By: Walter Kempowski, and others
-
Chronicle in Stone
- A Novel
- By: Ismail Kadare
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 63
Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful
- By Shqipe on 05-30-15
By: Ismail Kadare
-
The Kindly Ones
- By: Jonathan Littell
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 39 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 292
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 218
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 217
The chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Office politics in hell
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 04-02-13
By: Jonathan Littell
-
Nocturne
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Blech
- By Caroline H. on 02-20-11
By: Diane Armstrong
-
All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
-
The Glass Palace
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 688
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 522
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 520
Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
I struggled to finish... enough said.
- By Ty on 05-02-10
By: Amitav Ghosh
-
Bend Sinister
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 70
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 71
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
A fantastic fairytale of fascism
- By Darwin8u on 12-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
The Magus
- By: John Fowles
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 902
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 797
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 806
John Fowles’s The Magus was a literary landmark of the 1960s. Nicholas Urfe goes to a Greek island to teach at a private school and becomes enmeshed in curious happenings at the home of a mysterious Greek recluse, Maurice Conchis. Are these events, involving attractive young English sisters, just psychological games, or an elaborate joke, or more? Reality shifts as the story unfolds. The Magus reflected the issues of the 1960s perfectly, and it continues to create tension and concern today.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
One of the best novels that I really think I hate.
- By Darwin8u on 01-29-14
By: John Fowles
-
Les Misérables
- Penguin Classics
- By: Christine Donougher, Victor Hugo, Robert Tombs
- Narrated by: Adeel Akhtar, Natalie Simpson, Adrian Scarborough, and others
- Length: 65 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 190
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 167
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 165
Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Policeman, Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great Book, Great Translation, 5 Great Narrators
- By Rain Wiegartner on 06-07-20
By: Christine Donougher, and others
-
Life Class
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Russell Boulter
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 75
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 51
In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
In Love and War
- By Cariola on 07-28-09
By: Pat Barker
-
The Last King of Scotland
- By: Giles Foden
- Narrated by: Mirron E. Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 131
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 71
Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his Maserati, has hit a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, obsessed with all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. So begins a fateful dalliance with the African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Worst Production Ever
- By James on 01-24-07
By: Giles Foden
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,869
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,533
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,538
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 334
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 294
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
His life was interesting, but not his memoir
- By DR Harle on 01-27-19
By: Amos Oz
-
Troubles
- By: J. G. Farrell
- Narrated by: Kevin Hely
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 76
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 76
Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Absolutely delightful read
- By E. Kim on 02-25-20
By: J. G. Farrell
-
Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 888
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 785
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 784
The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
-
The Road Back
- A Novel
- By: Erich Maria Remarque
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 121
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
After four grueling years, the Great War has finally ended. Now Ernst and the few men left from his company cannot help wondering what will become of them. The town they departed as eager young men seems colder, their homes smaller, the reasons their comrades had to die even more inexplicable. For Ernst and his friends, the road back to peace is more treacherous than they ever imagined. Suffering food shortages, political unrest, and a broken heart, Ernst undergoes a crisis that teaches him what there is to live for - and what he has that no one can ever take away.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great Successor to All Quiet on the Western Front
- By BARRY on 02-20-19
-
The Gift
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 51
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 42
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native language and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write - a book very much like The Gift itself.
One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
A complex and rich Künstlerroman
- By Darwin8u on 11-30-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Last Comes the Raven
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection - one of Calvino’s earliest - take place in a World War II era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller’s later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him.
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 8
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Uneven but worth listening to if you like Calvino
- By Daniel on 02-21-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Mr. Palomar
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This is an AMAZING Book!
- By The on 09-13-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
Under the Jaguar Sun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1
These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico's fiery chiles and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, "Under the Jaguar Sun". In "A King Listens", a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant's thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. "The Name, the Nose" drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Last Comes the Raven
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection - one of Calvino’s earliest - take place in a World War II era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller’s later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him.
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 8
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Uneven but worth listening to if you like Calvino
- By Daniel on 02-21-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Mr. Palomar
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This is an AMAZING Book!
- By The on 09-13-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
Under the Jaguar Sun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1
These intoxicating stories delve down to the core of our senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Amid the flavors of Mexico's fiery chiles and spices, a couple on holiday discovers dark truths about the maturing of desire in the title story, "Under the Jaguar Sun". In "A King Listens", a gripping portrait of a frenzied mind, the menacing echoes in a huge palace spur a tyrant's thoughts to the heights of paranoid intensity. "The Name, the Nose" drives to a startling conclusion as men across time and space pursue the women whose aromas have enchanted them.
By: Italo Calvino