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In a Free State
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam, Neil Shah, Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
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In a Free State
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Publisher's summary
No writer has rendered our boundaryless, postcolonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives.
On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims. Alongside this Conradian tour de force are four incisive portraits of men seeking liberation far from home.
By turns funny and terrifying, sorrowful and unsparing, In a Free State is Naipaul at his best.
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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.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Worst Production Ever
- By James on 01-24-07
By: Giles Foden
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The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 79
Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mystery with humor and insight
- By Ida Hagman on 10-02-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,866
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,530
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 1,535
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
The Masked Rider
- Cycling in West Africa
- By: Neil Peart
- Narrated by: Brian Sutherland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 481
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 424
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 424
The prolific drummer for the rock band Rush travels through African villages, both large and small, and relates his story through journal entries and tales of adventure, while simultaneously addressing issues such as differences in culture, psychology, and labels. Literary and artistic sidekicks such as Aristotle, Dante, and Van Gogh join Peart and his cycling companions, reminding the listener that this is not just another travel book - it is a story of both external and introspective discovery and adventure.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating Trip Across Cameroon
- By Diann Sedam on 11-26-19
By: Neil Peart
-
The Road Home
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008, The Road Home is the best-selling story of Lev, a middle-aged migrant from Eastern Europe, who moves to London in search of work after losing his wife and job. Lev's London is awash with money, celebrity and complacency. The world Tremain creates is both convincing and poignant.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
OK - nice narration - good characters
- By bea on 02-21-11
By: Rose Tremain
-
Fragile Things
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: Neil Gaiman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,454
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 2,657
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,637
Marvelous creations, including a short story set in the world of The Matrix and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction, can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his entertaining (and dark) sense of humor.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Perhaps a different format?
- By Karen on 11-03-10
By: Neil Gaiman
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 192
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 135
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Koko
- Blue Rose Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 22 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 355
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 321
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 324
KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They are Vietnam vets — a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a single shattering secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York.
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2 out of 5 stars
-
7 hours in and I am done
- By bionichands on 01-26-12
By: Peter Straub
-
Three Comrades
- By: Erich Maria Remarque, Arthur Wesley Wheen - translator
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 54
The year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city, three young men are earning a thin and precarious living. Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around them. Then the youngest of them falls in love and brings into the group a young woman who will become a comrade as well, as they are all tested in ways they can have never imagined.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Love and friendship in a dying world.
- By Tarquin on 03-18-19
By: Erich Maria Remarque, and others
-
Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 142
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 123
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 127
This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
-
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
-
East of the Sun
- By: Julia Gregson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 157
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 109
Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood, ghosts from the past and freedom.
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1 out of 5 stars
-
Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
-
The Wayward Bus
- By: John Steinbeck, Gary Schamhorst - introduction
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 775
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 695
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 691
In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California's back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future. This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Steinbeck always touches the heart, makes you feel
- By Kelly on 05-08-17
By: John Steinbeck, and others
-
One of Ours
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Kristen Underwood
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 127
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 92
Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Cather's writing is impeccable
- By Kelly on 12-20-19
By: Willa Cather
-
A Fatal Inversion
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 98
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 86
In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Oh my!
- By Jill on 06-15-14
By: Barbara Vine
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Spanning continents and centuries and defying literary categories, A Way in the World tells intersecting stories whose protagonists include the disgraced and half-demented Sir Walter Raleigh, who seeks El Dorado in the New World; the 19th-century insurgent Francisco Miranda, who becomes entangled in his own fantasies and borrowed ideas; and the doomed Blair, a present-day Caribbean revolutionary stranded in East Africa.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 18
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
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3 out of 5 stars
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3 out of 5 stars
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3 out of 5 stars
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In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
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Beautiful, insightful, troubling
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A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Performance makes a fatal mistake. No Trini accent
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The Mimic Men
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
Former government minister Ralph Singh is the perpetual outsider: displaced, disillusioned, and now living in exile, Ralph reflects on his earlier life and the searing effects of colonialism. Ralph's constant estrangement sees him ever attempting to fit into various communities, only to find home in more transient spaces. Born on the tropical island of Isabella, he is one of West India's many "Mimic Men".
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Moon Tiger
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Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt.
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stunning beauty
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Oscar and Lucinda
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4 out of 5 stars 100
Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A book to wade in, submerge into.
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Half a Life
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 7
The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray.
By: V. S. Naipaul
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Guerrillas
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4 out of 5 stars 6
On an unnamed Caribbean Island, political tensions provoked by race and poverty are high. Jimmy Ahmed, a young mixed-race man, has been hailed as a revolutionary leader of the people. Roche, imprisoned for activities against South Africa's apartheid regime, and Jane, a feckless English rich girl wanting to feel a part of something bigger, get sucked into the turmoil and world of Ahmed. But does anyone achieve anything by causing unrest? Do any of them really want freedom in a new society or just the old society with themselves at the helm of power?
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1 out of 5 stars
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Reactionary Islamophobia 101
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By: V. S. Naipaul
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True History of the Kelly Gang
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Story4 out of 5 stars 287
Ned Kelly's name resonates in Australia the same way the name Jesse James does in America. Was he a crusading folk hero or murderous horse thief and bank robber? Who was the real Ned Kelly? As the impoverished son of an Irish convict, Kelly was cheated, lied to, and abused by the English. Committed to fighting back against oppression, Kelly and his gang of outlaws eluded police for nearly two years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An 'adjectival' masterpiece of 'effing' prose.
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Peter Carey
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Last Orders
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 128
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 126
In a London Pub called The Coach and Horses, four men gather. Three of them have been friends for half a lifetime, having fought in the same war, drunk in the same pubs, and bet on the same horses. Now they have come together to deliver the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, to the sea. Their journey, which will take them deep into their collective and individual pasts, lies at the center of an astonishingly moving novel of friendship, memory, and fate.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Don't hesitate
- By Robert on 03-23-06
By: Graham Swift
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The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book, and Other Comic Inventions
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7
V. S. Naipaul's legendary command of broad comedy and acute social observation is on abundant display in these classic works of fiction - two novels and a collection of stories - that capture the rhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressive subtlety and humor.
By: V. S. Naipaul
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Resurrection
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 143
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Tolstoy based Resurrection, the last of his novels, on a true story of a philanderer whose misuse of a beautiful young orphan girl leads to her ruin. Fate brings the two together many years later, and the meeting awakens the man's moral conscience. Anger, intimacy, forgiveness, and grace result.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Vance is Wonderful!
- By C. Davis on 09-26-09
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Offshore
- By: Penelope Fitzgerald, Stephanie Racine, Alan Hollinghurst - introduction
- Narrated by: Jot Davies, Alan Hollinghurst
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 77
On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames. There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach.
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1 out of 5 stars
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S.O.S
- By SB on 03-26-22
By: Penelope Fitzgerald, and others
What listeners say about In a Free State
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Maassing
- 01-24-21
Vivid
Naipaul’s writing has always been to me, vivid. With appropriate accents in the narration, the story comes to life. The third story with only 2 characters, is an unending discourse on landscapes and “feelings” that make it palpable and more interesting.
Yes it is three different stories. Don’t try connecting the dots- they are 3 different tastes of the mastery of VS Naipaul.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- JK
- 08-30-21
DO NOT MISS
An other masterfully written and narrated book.
There are a series of short stories, each completely different and thought provoking.
I became a fan of V.S. Naipaul, thanks to the “included” books, JK
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Peter Ryers
- 05-19-21
Wonderfully descriptive
A Nobel prize winner. Do I have to say more. The narration is musical and a pleasure to hear.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Yas
- 10-10-20
Masterful
Naipaul's brilliance is in the capturing of moments in the most simplistic manner. In this work the Nobel laureate takes us on a long heart warming ride through moments in different personalities, from diverse free States of perceptions.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dana Page
- 06-23-21
Gripping poignancy
This is a series of heartbreaking, intimately rendered separate short stories, dealing with the savagery with which the human species can treat one another. This brilliant author has created such vivid characters, that I feel as if I have just had dinner with each of them. It is the thought-provokingly timeless story of the oppressed, the unsung immigrant, the need to be seen and appreciated as a valuable citizen in this shared world. The narrator is simply magnificent.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Christofer Bartlett
- 01-16-22
Excellent writing, and yet
The writing is excellent, however the story is tiresome and could been accomplished in many fewer pages.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Saman
- 07-19-18
Magical Prose …
This is a biased review. I love Naipaul and his style of writing, His books are so beautifully threaded, they are impossible to put down. Of course this offering was the 1971 Booker prize winner. As many will know, there was controversy in the selection that year from the committee with many shenanigans. But the author and book won anyways.
The story – well 5 of them actually, are all wonderful. The first and last being a travelogue of sorts with the first leaving a bitter taste due to its subject matter of nauseating bullying. In between are some captivating stories that illuminate the pen strokes of Naipaul. Most revel in the novella that captures an automobile ride of two British nationals across the African plane. Some say in Uganda. I myself preferred the hilariously funny “One Out of Many” short story. In it, a backward Indian servant named Santosh is brought by plane to the USA by his employer with ridiculous results. There is also the short story of two Trinidadian Indian brothers who end up in London, suffering many immigrant disappointments.
This book is unlike any other from the author. Yet each story is vintage Naipaul. Loved them all.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- joanne
- 10-28-18
What the...? So strange
There are 3 stories, 3 Settings, 3 Protagonists as told by 3 narrators. They are not connected in any way, have no real plot that can be defined & no moral or point. What ever Naipaul was trying to convey was completely lost on this reader / listener.
Don’t waste your time or money.
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1 person found this helpful