The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 51 mins)
• By Mikhail Bulgakov
• Narrated By Julian Rhind-Tutt

The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn't all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.

The Master and Margarita [Russian Edition]

• UNABRIDGED (16 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Mikhail Bulgakov
• Narrated By Vladimir Ivanovich Samoylov

Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow. Mikhail Bulgakov's fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with historical, imaginary, frightful, and wonderful characters.

Bulgakov: A Dog's Heart

• UNABRIDGED (3 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Mikhail Bulgakov
• Narrated By Roy McMillan

When a respected surgeon decides to transplant human body parts into a stray dog, he creates a monster - drunken, profligate, aggressive and selfish. It seems the worst aspects of the donor have been transplanted as well. As his previously well-regulated home descends into riotous chaos, the doctor realises he will have to try to reverse the operation; but the dog isn't so keen....

The Master and Margarita (Dramatized)

• ORIGINAL (1 hr and 45 mins)
• By Mikhail Bulgakov
• Narrated By David Catlin, Thomas Cox, Lawrence DiStasi, and others

A full-cast dramatization of the classic Russian novel. Satan and his retinue, including a seven foot tall skinny fellow with a pince-nez , an obnoxious cigar smoking black cat and a beautiful naked vampire visit Moscow in the 1920s, taking with them chaos and insanity where ever they go.

Borne

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Jeff VanderMeer
• Narrated By Bahni Turpin
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company - a biotech firm now derelict - and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.

October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 37 mins)
• By China Mieville
• Narrated By John Banks
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The renowned fantasy and science fiction writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution, and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?

Fathers and Sons

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Ivan Turgenev
• Narrated By Sean Runnette
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When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naïve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by criticizing the landowning way of life and by his outspoken determination to sweep away traditional values of contemporary Russian society.

The Leopard

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 7 mins)
• By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• Narrated By David Horovitch
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Elegiac, bittersweet and profoundly moving, The Leopard chronicles the turbulent transformation of the Risorgimento, in the period of Italian Unification. The waning feudal authority of the elegant and stately Prince of Salina is pitted against the materialistic cunning of Don Calogero, in Tomasi's magnificently descriptive memorial to a dying age.

Norse Mythology

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 29 mins)
• By Neil Gaiman
• Narrated By Neil Gaiman
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Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales. In Norse Mythology, Gaiman fashions primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds; delves into the exploits of the deities, dwarves, and giants; and culminates in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and the rebirth of a new time and people.

Exit West: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (4 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Mohsin Hamid
• Narrated By Mohsin Hamid
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price.

Dead Souls

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 54 mins)
• By Nikolai Gogol, C. J. Hogarth (translator)
• Narrated By Arthur Morey

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town and visits a succession of landowners to make each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these "souls" as collateral to reinvent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Nikolai Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types.

Doctor Zhivago

• UNABRIDGED (23 hrs and 23 mins)
• By Boris Pasternak, Richard Pevear (translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)
• Narrated By John Lee

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.

Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

• UNABRIDGED (27 hrs)
• By Thomas Mann
• Narrated By David Rintoul
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.

The Idiot

• UNABRIDGED (25 hrs)
• By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Narrated By Constantine Gregory
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Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin is one of the great characters in Russian literature. Is he a saint or just naïve? Is he an idealist or, as many in General Epanchin's society feel, an "idiot"? Certainly his return to St. Petersburg after years in a Swiss clinic has a dramatic effect on the beautiful Aglaia, youngest of the Epanchin daughters, and on the charismatic but willful Nastasya Filippovna. As he paints a vivid picture of Russian society, Dostoyevsky shows how principles conflict with emotions - with tragic results.

A Hero of Our Time

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 11 mins)
• By Mikhail Lermontov
• Narrated By Clive Chafer

In A Hero of Our Time, Grigory Pechorin is a bored, self-centered, and cynical young army officer who believes in nothing. With impunity he toys with the love of women and the goodwill of men. He is brave, determined, and willful, but his wasted energy and potential ultimately result in tragedy.

Anna Karenina

• UNABRIDGED (35 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Leo Tolstoy
• Narrated By Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.

Lolita

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 32 mins)
• By Vladimir Nabokov
• Narrated By Jeremy Irons
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Why we think it’s a great listen: Among the great literary achievements of the 20th century, Lolita soars in audio thanks to the incomparable Jeremy Irons, bringing to life Nabokov’s ability to shock and enthrall more than 50 years after publication. Lolita became a cause celebre because of the erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Nabokov's masterpiece owes its stature not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story that is shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 46 mins)
• By Hermann Hesse
• Narrated By Jeff Woodman

Here is the dramatic story of young, docile Emil Sinclair's descent - led by precocious schoolmate Max Demian - into a secret and dangerous world of petty crime and revolt against convention and eventual awakening to selfhood.

Russian Level 1 Lessons 1-5: Learn to Speak and Understand Russian with Pimsleur Language Programs

• ORIGINAL (2 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Pimsleur
• Narrated By Pimsleur

Each lesson in Russian Level 1 Lessons 1-5 provides 30 minutes of spoken language practice, with an introductory conversation and new vocabulary and structures. Detailed instructions enable you to understand and participate in the conversation.

Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 25 mins)
• By George Saunders
• Narrated By Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, and others
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented. February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 4 mins)
• By Gabriel García Márquez
• Narrated By John Lee

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

The Sympathizer: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 53 mins)
• By Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Narrated By Francois Chau
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

The House of the Spirits: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (18 hrs and 51 mins)
• By Isabel Allende
• Narrated By Thom Rivera, Marisol Ramirez
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter, Blanca, embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban.

1Q84

• UNABRIDGED (46 hrs and 50 mins)
• By Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (translator), Philip Gabriel (translator)
• Narrated By Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, Mark Boyett
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....