• House of Meetings

  • By: Martin Amis
  • Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
  • Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (56 ratings)

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.
House of Meetings  By  cover art

House of Meetings

By: Martin Amis
Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $17.12

Buy for $17.12

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

There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic.

House of Meetings is about one such liaison. It is a triangular romance: two brothers fall in love with the same girl, a 19-year-old Jewess, in Moscow, which is poised for massacre in the gap between the war and the death of Stalin. Both brothers are arrested, and their rivalry slowly complicates itself over a decade in the slave camp above the Arctic Circle.

©2006 Martin Amis. All rights reserved (P)2010 BBC Audiobooks America

Critic reviews

“Vivid and scarifying.... The book gnaws at one’s memory. Amis tries to imagine history with the intimacy and specificity that the greatest historical novelists, including Tolstoy, have always presumed to seek for it.” ( The Washington Post Book World)
"A[n] unrelenting and deeply affecting performance: A bullet train of a novel that barrels deep into the heart of darkness that was the Soviet gulag and takes the reader along on an unnerving journey into one of history’s most harrowing chapters.” ( The New York Times)

What listeners say about House of Meetings

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    27
  • 4 Stars
    19
  • 3 Stars
    8
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    30
  • 4 Stars
    14
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    22
  • 4 Stars
    12
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2

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

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous

Martin Amis at the height of his powers, pounding wonderous patterns depicting love and familial solidarity in amongst the weave of wholesale loss, despair and suffering in Stalin's post-war forced labor camps. A father's memoir written for a beloved daughter, where the truth is laid bare, revealing the darkest elements of a quote dark life in amongst heartfelt appreciation, and the bonds of love.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Disturbing, amazing story, wonderful performance

I was directed to Martin Amis by Christopher Hitchens; this is my first of the most likely many of his books I will read. It's an erudite, literary memoir of an unlikable but disturbingly hard to ignore old Russian protagonist narrating his life story to his young American daughter. I really loved it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful