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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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Publisher's summary
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals - while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being.”
A major achievement from one of the world’s truly great writers, Milan Kundera’s magnificent novel of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
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-
The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,034
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 916
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Story4 out of 5 stars 909
Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
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Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 156
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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The Setting Sun
- New Directions Book
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: June Angela
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MORE OSAMU DAZAI TRANSLATIONS PLEASE!!!!!
- By Lucky on 10-19-22
By: Osamu Dazai
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The Golden Notebook
- By: Doris Lessing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 515
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 428
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 425
Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
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The Museum of Innocence
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 318
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 238
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Story4 out of 5 stars 238
Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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5 out of 5 stars
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one of the very best I've ever heard
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 03-06-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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Burr
- A Novel (Narratives of Empire, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 923
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 790
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 790
Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally! Vidal's Great Take on the Life of Burr
- By John Norton on 06-12-19
By: Gore Vidal
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Myra Breckinridge
- A Novel (Myra and Myron, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal, Camille Paglia - introduction
- Narrated by: Michelle Hendley, Camille Paglia
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
"I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent, Myra's moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well performed
- By Kenny D on 06-08-19
By: Gore Vidal, and others
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The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
- By: Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa - translator
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 6,133
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,370
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5,372
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.
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1 out of 5 stars
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What in the heck happened?????
- By Melinda on 02-05-14
By: Gabriel García Márquez, and others
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Death in Venice
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: Peter Batchelor
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 209
-
Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 181
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 183
A stunningly beautiful youth and the city of Venice set the stage for Thomas Mann’s introspective examination of erotic love and philosophical wisdom.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A problem with the narration
- By Erez on 03-19-12
By: Thomas Mann
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Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,886
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,666
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,671
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
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A Grain of Wheat
- By: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952-1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of Kenya's Great
- By Afro History fan on 07-31-19
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Steppenwolf
- By: Hermann Hesse
- Narrated by: Peter Weller
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,548
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,246
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,245
Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Save this Hesse novel for your midlife crisis.
- By Darwin8u on 03-02-14
By: Hermann Hesse
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All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.
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Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A well-lubricated orgy of ideas
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The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile!"), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud.
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The Penguin Lessons
- What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird
- By: Tom Michell
- Narrated by: Bill Nighy
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 114
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 113
In 1975, 23-year-old Englishman Tom Michell follows his wanderlust to Argentina, where he becomes assistant master at a prestigious boarding school. But Michell's adventures really begin when, on a weekend in Uruguay, he rescues a penguin covered in oil from an ocean spill, cleans the bird up, and attempts to return him to the sea. But the penguin refuses to leave his rescuer's side.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyable!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 38
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Disconcerted and enchanted, the listener follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than 200 years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic. Underlying this libertine fantasy is a profound meditation on contemporary life: about the secret bond between slowness and memory, about the connection between our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. And about "dancers" possessed by the passion to be seen, for whom life is merely a perpetual show .
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well done
- By Liam SR on 05-25-19
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The Joke
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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4 out of 5 stars
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A well-lubricated orgy of ideas
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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In 1975, 23-year-old Englishman Tom Michell follows his wanderlust to Argentina, where he becomes assistant master at a prestigious boarding school. But Michell's adventures really begin when, on a weekend in Uruguay, he rescues a penguin covered in oil from an ocean spill, cleans the bird up, and attempts to return him to the sea. But the penguin refuses to leave his rescuer's side.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyable!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Disconcerted and enchanted, the listener follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than 200 years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic. Underlying this libertine fantasy is a profound meditation on contemporary life: about the secret bond between slowness and memory, about the connection between our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. And about "dancers" possessed by the passion to be seen, for whom life is merely a perpetual show .
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Glorious Heresies
- Winner of the Baileys' Women's Prize for Fiction 2016
- By: Lisa McInerney
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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He was definitely dead, whoever he was. He wore a once-black jumper and a pair of shiny tracksuit bottoms. The back of his head was cracked and his hair matted, but it had been foxy before that. A tall man, a skinny rake, another string of piss, now departed. She hadn't gotten a look at his face before she flaked him with the Holy Stone, and she couldn't bring herself to turn him over. One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Suzanna on 01-23-23
By: Lisa McInerney
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Laughable Loves
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 39
Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road - only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone home to his wife.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Really hard to follow
- By Ingrid on 02-07-24
By: Milan Kundera
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Identity
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- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 35
There are situations in which we fail for a moment to recognize the person we are with, in which the identity of the other is erased while we simultaneously doubt our own. This also happens with couples - indeed, above all with couples, because lovers fear more than anything else "losing sight" of the loved one. With stunning artfulness in expanding and playing variations on the meaningful moment, Milan Kundera has made this situation - and the vague sense of panic it inspires - the very fabric of this novel.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting
- By Jamy Bee on 12-16-18
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Ignorance
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- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4 out of 5 stars 27
Irena and Josef meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned 20 years earlier. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match."
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Encounter
- Essays
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 17
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
Milan Kundera's brilliant new collection of essays is a passionate defense of art in an era that, he argues, no longer values art or beauty. With the same dazzling mix of emotion and ideas that characterizes his bestselling novels, the internationally acclaimed author revisits the artists whose works help us better understand what it means to be human. Elegant, startlingly original, and provocative, Encounter combines many of the author's signature themes with personal reflections and stories.
By: Milan Kundera
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Bridget Jones's Diary
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,392
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,239
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,235
A dazzling urban satire of modern human relations? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something? The third installment in Bridget Jones' journey, Mad About the Boy, will be out in October 2013.
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5 out of 5 stars
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love
- By Lauren nicole on 05-29-15
By: Helen Fielding
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Testaments Betrayed
- An Essay in Nine Parts
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11
Milan Kundera has established himself as one of the great novelists of our time with such books as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality, and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In Testaments Betrayed, he proves himself a brilliant defender of the moral rights of the artist and the respect due to a work of art and its creator's wishes. The betrayal of both - often by their most passionate proponents - is the principal theme of this extraordinary work. Listeners will be particularly intrigued by Kundera's impassioned attack on society's shifting moral judgments and persecutions of art and artists.
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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The Festival of Insignificance
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4 out of 5 stars 36
Listeners who know Milan Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the "unserious" in a novel is not at all unexpected of him.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Review of Little Significance.
- By Darwin8u on 07-14-15
By: Milan Kundera
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The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Farewell Waltz
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4 out of 5 stars 23
In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; an disillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward. Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy.
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2 out of 5 stars
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didn't agree well.
- By Davygamm on 09-26-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
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Euphoria
- A Novel
- By: Lily King
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Xe Sands
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,598
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,166
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,157
English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers' deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband, Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell's poor health, are hungry for a new discovery.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Anthropologists in Love
- By David on 08-21-14
By: Lily King
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A Kidnapped West
- The Tragedy of Central Europe
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 1 hr and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1
In a moment of historic threat and uncertainty in mainland Europe, this collection, makes the case for the 'small countries' of Central Europe as the nucleus of European values and a lightning rod for its potential dangers, where language and culture play an active role in affirming national identity and democracy is under continued threat from the threat of Russian oppression. However, these countries have been historically overlooked by the major powers of Western Europe.
By: Milan Kundera
What listeners say about The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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
- ALEX
- 02-03-23
Beautiful story
One of my favorite stories and also veru good performance with nice and charming voice which matched the story.
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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
- Honest review
- 12-18-22
I enjoyed this book…
..although I am not sure I understood it all.
Nevertheless, better than most superficial novels designed to be interesting but teaching you nothing.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Andrew
- 03-24-24
Great at times, but also dull and winding betimes
It starts out well, but then lags. Variably misoginistic, outdated, but with some redemption as through the light of modern exposure. Perhaps some uniting threads are just a little too tattered. But it finishes well.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- J
- 07-08-14
Great start but...
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
It is time well spent, there are lots of ideas and great character portrayals but after a while I felt like I was being lectured at. I wanted the ideas to be more an integral part of the narrative instead of being long discussions in the voice of the character but still totally outside of the character's likely behaviour. It was too frustrating.
Would you ever listen to anything by Milan Kundera and Michael Henry Heim (translator) again?
Yes. There was enough wonderful to get over the fact that there was too much of a good thing. The narrator has a lovely voice too and I'm terribly picky about narrators.
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9 people 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
- Maxsauntie
- 10-28-15
NAILED IT
Are there awards for audio book narration? Because Hoxie killed it. Obviously Kundera's novel is incredible, a moving fusion of philosophy and memoir and fiction. Hoxie honored the text with his performance and heightened the emotional resonance.
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3 people 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
- April W
- 03-13-17
A classic
Great listen. I love the style of this writer. Sabina was so intriguing, so free, so light.
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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
- Kindle Customer
- 02-07-20
A modern classic
This is one of the few books that I have read twice over the past half century. It was a favourite read of my undergraduate university years. I just read it again 32 years later and it remains a favourite. Indeed reading it having lived so much more than I had the first time I read it allowed the reading to read and impact me at a much deeper level this time around. Excellent narration.
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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
- Ryan D. Reese
- 08-20-21
The book of relationships
At first I did not think that I would like this book then I began to love it and fall in love with the characters. The characters remind me of people in my life and are very relatable very real very flawed they are people. In my mind this book is about your relationship with the world and everything in it. The political and philosophical questions are fantastic and lead to fantastic thought.
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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
- Eduardo Jaen
- 09-23-21
EXCELLENT
LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, EXCELLENT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, MUST READ, MUST READ!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 05-03-22
Love in the Time of Communism
I thought some of the material was superfluous and repetitive, like the author was struggling to meet the minimum word count, but the storyline and its philosophical underpinnings more than made up for any shortcomings. One of those rare novels that causes you to reconsider your worldview. I loved the conclusion, which was superbly subtle. Narration was in the loud whisper style of Hollywood but certainly adequate.
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