-
The Finkler Question
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Premium Plus
$14.95 a month
Buy for $21.31
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Luminaries
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 29 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1866 and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
-
-
Sometimes you need to have a book read to you
- By Allan Cumming on 10-31-13
By: Eleanor Catton
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
Just Brilliant!
- By Philip A on 01-30-16
By: Marlon James
-
Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes "interesting" - the last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed, and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
-
-
Like the writing, not the audio issues
- By Criticalthinker on 12-31-18
By: Anna Burns
-
Live a Little
- A Novel
- By: Howard Jacobson
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 90-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. Her tongue, meanwhile, remains as sharp as ever. She spends her days stitching macabre messages into her needlework and tormenting her two long-suffering carers with tangled stories of her love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walk without the aid of a frame, and speak without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. Unlike Beryl, he forgets nothing - especially not the shame of a childhood incident.
By: Howard Jacobson
-
The Sea
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife's death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child; a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.
-
-
OVERWHELMINGLY FINE
- By Karen on 07-20-07
By: John Banville
-
My Year Abroad
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Lawrence Kao
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
-
-
Worst narration ever
- By Unhappy Sirius Camper on 02-07-21
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
The Luminaries
- By: Eleanor Catton
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 29 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1866 and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
-
-
Sometimes you need to have a book read to you
- By Allan Cumming on 10-31-13
By: Eleanor Catton
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
Just Brilliant!
- By Philip A on 01-30-16
By: Marlon James
-
Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes "interesting" - the last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed, and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
-
-
Like the writing, not the audio issues
- By Criticalthinker on 12-31-18
By: Anna Burns
-
Live a Little
- A Novel
- By: Howard Jacobson
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 90-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. Her tongue, meanwhile, remains as sharp as ever. She spends her days stitching macabre messages into her needlework and tormenting her two long-suffering carers with tangled stories of her love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walk without the aid of a frame, and speak without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. Unlike Beryl, he forgets nothing - especially not the shame of a childhood incident.
By: Howard Jacobson
-
The Sea
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife's death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child; a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.
-
-
OVERWHELMINGLY FINE
- By Karen on 07-20-07
By: John Banville
-
My Year Abroad
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Lawrence Kao
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
-
-
Worst narration ever
- By Unhappy Sirius Camper on 02-07-21
By: Chang-rae Lee
-
The Sellout
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.
-
-
Do Yourself a Favor - Listen to Another Book
- By AuntGert on 11-16-16
By: Paul Beatty
-
J
- A Novel
- By: Howard Jacobson PhD
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Colin Mace
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying. After the devastation of WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED, all that should remain is peace and prosperity. Everyone knows his or her place; all actions are out in the open. But Esme Nussbaum has seen the distorted realities, the fissures that have only widened in the 20-plus years since she was forced to resign from her position at the monitor of the Public Mood.
-
-
interesting
- By deanna on 03-11-16
-
Bring Up the Bodies
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down.
-
-
Perfection in story and the telling
- By Ry Young on 09-18-12
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
-
-
Historical with a touch of the fantastic
- By David on 07-02-11
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Trust Exercise
- A Novel
- By: Susan Choi
- Narrated by: Adina Verson, Jennifer Lim, Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer finalist Susan Choi's narrative-upending audiobook about what happens when a first love between high school students is interrupted by the attentions of a charismatic teacher.
-
-
fabulous performance, incisive writing
- By working mom on 05-22-19
By: Susan Choi
-
Quichotte
- A Novel
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
-
-
Tough to follow, closes strong
- By D. Sooley on 11-04-19
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With The Blind Assassin, Atwood proves once again that she is one of the most talented, daring, and exciting writers of the time. Like The Handmaid's Tale, this Book Prize-winner is destined to become a classic.
-
-
Terrible audio quality
- By G. Sierra on 04-12-10
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Homeland Elegies
- A Novel
- By: Ayad Akhtar
- Narrated by: Ayad Akhtar
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one - least of all himself - in the process.
-
-
a mishmash of political theory and porn
- By LC on 02-06-21
By: Ayad Akhtar
-
The Dead Are Arising
- The Life of Malcolm X
- By: Les Payne, Tamara Payne
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author's interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.
-
-
Much more depth than the Haley book.
- By CapitalHeel on 11-03-20
By: Les Payne, and others
-
The Trial
- By: Franz Kafka
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If Max Brod had obeyed Franz Kafka's dying request, Kafka's unpublished manuscripts would have been burned, unread. Fortunately, Brod ignored his friend's wishes and published The Trial, which became the author's most famous work. Now Kafka's enigmatic novel regains its humor and stylistic elegance in a new translation based on the restored original manuscript.
-
-
Excellent New Translation of a Classic Novel
- By Michael on 08-12-12
By: Franz Kafka
-
The Mirror & the Light
- A Novel
- By: Hilary Mantel
- Narrated by: Ben Miles
- Length: 38 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story begins in May 1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.
-
-
Ben Miles is not as good a reader...
- By EllenP on 03-13-20
By: Hilary Mantel
-
Girl, Woman, Other
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Anna-Maria Nabirye
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and short-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, Girl, Woman, Other paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
-
-
smart, compassionate, confronting and enjoyable
- By Kelly on 12-20-19
Publisher's Summary
Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 2010
Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. Now all three are recently widowed, in their own way, and spend sweetly painful evenings together reminiscing. Until an unexpected violent attack brings everything they thought they knew into question.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Finkler Question
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- BabsD
- 11-19-10
Funny, touching, thoughtful
Wonderful book, brimming with challenging and fascinating characters. Jacobson provides the sparkling words---ironic, true, funny, depressing, illuminating. All of the characters are flawed humans, all receive the author's empathy. Crossley captures each of the characters brilliantly, even the women (and such wonderful women, from the departed Melkie to the serious and humane Hepzibah). Whether precocious child, snarling teen, or ancient Czech, Crossley finds their essence. Was bereft when it ended (only complaint is with the packager, who stepped on the ending without a pause to breathe).
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sean
- 09-22-18
Poignant, complex and touch - very 'Finkleresque'.
This book captures the complexities of being Jewish and human, both for Jews and non-Jews alike. The Jew, as a character in human history has been both reviled (Shylock, Judas, modern-day Israel) and loved (Jesus, David, Einstein). This book cleverly explores the complex relationship that society and culture has with Jews and Jews with the rest of the world. The book's title is a play on 'the Jewish question' or 'Jewish problem', which was an ongoing vile debate in 19th and 20th century Europe, around the status of Jews, their rights and political status.
The fact that this was even a subject for debate and in some cases still is, shows a level of madness within the human mind I feel. This deeply destructive and hateful part of us has lead to genocides and discrimination against Jews and others; this is what the book tries to come to grips with. The protagonist, a non-Jew, who struggles with what it means to be Jewish, both in his admiration for them as well as jealousy of them, drives him to a type of hysteria that he struggles to explicate himself from. It's a funny, witty book that is both charming and challenging at times. The only issue I had was the narrator's Czech accent, that needed some work.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Paul
- 12-29-13
Wise and hilarious.
Any additional comments?
Humor is a curious business, isn't it. Unlike some other reviewers here, I laughed all the way.
-
Overall

- Deborah
- 01-14-11
Brilliant, dark, funny and a complete pleasure
This book is such an unexpected treat, especially given most of the other reviews. The 3 main characters (Treslove, Finkler and Libor) are brilliant, very clever and funny but also very human and quite sad and by the end of the book you feel you know them inside out (the reader characterizes them beautifully, especially Libor, my favourite). What does it mean to be Jewish, is it a blessing or a curse? The quest to answer this conundrum, the main theme of the book, makes you often smile inside or laugh out loud but the humour is very dark, constellated with wry wisdom. If you 'get it', this is a most wonderful book. I'm going to read more Jacobson on the basis of this.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- John
- 01-20-11
Interesting but soulless
Even though I know it was deliberately void of character development, it was just a bit too soulless for me. Lot's of clever thematic metaphors and all that malarkey but all head and no heart makes Serge a dull boy. One for the critics to de-construct.
The narrator didn't help much either. He reminded me of a newsreader half the time. Maybe he was just keeping in spirit with the lack of emotion in the book. The sound quality wasn't great either though.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Lauenna
- 04-18-15
Enjoyed the second half
I really struggled with the first half of this book mainly because of how the main characters perceived women. It improved with the introduction of a female character or two and getting into the nitty gritty of the diversity of the London Jewish experience.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall

- Hugh
- 01-21-11
The Finkler Question
Despite very good reviews I was most disappointed with this book. I only managed to get half-way through before deciding that it is a lot of inconsequential drivel, so I gave up. The main problem is that the story-line is so thin that it does not maintain the listener's to listen on, at least not mine.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- Tom
- 11-08-10
oh dear....
I bought this book because it's a booker Prize winner and because the audiobook got a really good review in the Telegraph, which I have previously found to be pretty reliable. I wish, however, that I had read some the reviews on the amazon website first.
I'm about 1 1/2 hours into the book. so far there's nothing resembling a plot, the characters are ill-defined and not really very attractive or interesting, and laboured jewish jokes are not really my cup of tea. On top of that, the narration is decidedly off-putting.....What really disappoints me is that Howard Jacobson is supposed to be a humourous author. Well, I dont find him at all funny. Very forced and heavy handed.
So I'm giving up. I may come back to the book if I lose my will to live.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Antony
- 05-13-15
Disappointing
This won the Booker Prize a few years ago. No idea why. Tediously repetitive, two of the three main characters are entirely unsympathetic (Libor was the only person I liked) and not very funny, despite what I thought was a good, well charaterised reading by Stephen Crossley. I almost gave up with two hours to go, and now I have finished I wish I had given up and done something more rewarding with the time.
-
Overall

- Helen
- 10-17-12
Thoroughly Brilliant
Love the way this book is written, the narration by Steven Crossley is just beautiful, he brings to life the three main characters Treslove, Finkler and Libor so well that you really feel like you have got to know them personally, towards the end of the book its quite sad especially as you have gained a sort of intimacy with each one by then. What its like to be Jewish or what its like to want to be Jewish are the questions that come up throughout the text in a heartwarming, funny and very intimate way. Loved Kalooki Nights so was really looking forward to this one by the end of it, I was not disappointed. Giving The Finkler Question five stars, loved it and can not wait to read more from Howard Jacobson.
-
Overall

- Elizabeth
- 05-25-11
A disappointing answer
I had heard this was a funny book, but I barely smiled apart from one exception where I did laugh out loud. It is overlong, self-absorbed and too full of clever and not so clever wordplay. The minutes or pages devoted to whether a character has heard or misheard a certain phrase, which is returned to again and again, were simply tiresome. Had it been a physical book i may have thrown it out of the window.
ALL the characters seem addicted to the wordplay, which makes one assume it is the author who is addicted to it, and he should realise that it drives some people crazy, and perhaps thereby credit one of his characters with that stance. It would have made the whole more believable. a slow read , I wish I hadnt bothered with. Sorry.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall

- Clare
- 01-09-11
Why on earth did this win a Booker?!
I agree with the previous reviewer. Characters not particularly likeable or sympathetic, plot non-existent, too many and not very interesting or clever jewish jokes. This could have been illuminating and entertaining, but it was neither. I don't even think that it is particularly well-written. A rare disappointment from audible and from the Booker judges.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Liz
- 10-02-19
I couldn't get into this
I did not find this interesting or enjoyable. I couldn't get into it and gave up a short way in.