Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
In America  By  cover art

In America

By: Susan Sontag
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.95

Buy for $24.95

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

National Book Award, Fiction, 2000

The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag's best-selling 1992 novel, retold the love story of Emma Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson with consummate power. In this enthralling audiobook - once again based on a real story - Sontag shows us our own country on the cusp of modernity.

In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travel to California to found a "utopian" commune. Maryna, who has renounced her career, is accompanied by her small son and husband; in her entourage is a rising young writer who is in love with her.

The novel portrays a West that is still largely empty, where white settlers confront native Californians and Asian coolies. The image of America, and of California - as fantasy, as escape, as radical simplification - constantly meets a more complex reality. The commune fails and most of the émigrés go home, but Maryna stays and triumphs on the American stage.

In America is a big, juicy, surprising audiobook - about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, about the world of the theater - that will captivate listeners from the first chapter. It is Sontag's most delicious, most brilliant achievement.

©2000 Susan Sontag (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A passionate and often radical novel of ideas that affords all the old-fashioned pleasures of a traditional historical novel." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)
"Brave and beautiful.... Susan Sontag has indeed found a story that tells many stories with elan, intelligence, and delight." (The Washington Post Book World)

What listeners say about In America

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    4
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    4

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.