Death in Venice

By: Thomas Mann

Narrated by: Peter Batchelor

Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

A stunningly beautiful youth and the city of Venice set the stage for Thomas Mann’s introspective examination of erotic love and philosophical wisdom.

Public Domain (P)2011 Trout Lake Media

Enjoyed this Narrator

I love this book, and, unlike some reviewers, particularly liked this narration. He reads with understanding. I have listened to this recording several times.

A fine performance of the famous German novella

The narration of this story seems to be a point of contention. In my opinion, Peter Batchelor delivers a fine performance. The sample audio provided by Audible is consistent with his reading style for the entirety of the novella.

Mala narración

La dicción del narrador es muy pobre. La historia es bellísima, llena de emoción y color.

great book but..

i love this book, it's a great book... but it's hard to understand the narrator. it's kind of mumbled.

This is great. Now where is Magic Mountain?

Fantastic story, of course. Narrator's performance was acceptable to me.

Now please make an audio book of Magic Mountain ASAP!

This book changed my life.

Where do I even begin.
The story is haunting, both disturbing and beautiful. Although the plot drags on pretty slowly, it will suck you in. It will suck you into a shocking, beautiful vision of a scary, paedofiliac psycosis. And still it is all pure. There are no crimes commited, no thaughts omitted, and it is all descriptions of thoughts that both makes you sympathize with, and despice the book's main character, Herr von Aschenbach. The work hasen't left my mind since the days i first listened to is, read it, and studied it, always coming back to the book I learned to recognize as a masterpiece. Give it a try, and study it, if not, you are missing out on some great lectures on the suprising ways of the human mind.

Classic

Brilliant story. The performance is good, but sometimes hurried and slightly unclear. Nevertheless, a bargain at the price.

Not the best of Mann's works

After hearing my professor reference this book so much and reading some other works by the author, I really wanted to go through at a deliberate pace. It was a bit of an underwhelming experience, but I kept turning the pages as Mann's style is great. All and all not that exciting, but, if you're in a contemplative mood or want a good philosophical discussion on the european conception of aesthetics, I would suggest this book.

A problem with the narration

The book itself is well worthy of the name "classic". It is deep, intelligent and moving, and the most impressive thing about it, to me, was the apparent ease with which the author portrays such a complex protagonist and such deep feelings. However, I was only able to reach these conclusions after reading a print version of the book, since in the audiobook I could only barely follow the story.

The problem with the narrator is very simple: his voice is just too deep. He's not an untalented narrator, in that his pronunciation is very clear and he reads without any errors (I think I detected a hint of accent -- South African, perhaps?). However, he reads at such a low pitch that it is very hard to decipher what he's saying. Most of the time it sounds like someone grumbling to himself in another room. This would be a perfect voice for some sort of "mountain-man" in an animated film, but constantly straining to understand the narrator is not what you want in an audiobook.

Shatteringly beautiful

An aching requiem for love and reason set amidst the swelling sicknesses of Europe before the Great War.

I did eventually come to like the narrator very much- found his tone a bit monotonous at first, but perhaps in the end this was the right artistic choice considering the tone of the book.

All in all, great.