A Mother's Disgrace
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
A Mother's Disgrace
Buy for $13.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Robert Dessaix
-
By:
-
Robert Dessaix
About this listen
Adopted as a baby towards the end of World War II, Robert Dessaix grew up haunted by "a shaft of silence" surrounding the question of his natural mother's identity, and of his identity and sexuality. In this touching memoir, he recounts the story of a most unusual childhood on Sydney's North Shore; of his fascination with Russia and his years spent studying in Cold War Moscow; and of his restless wanderings around the world.
A Mother's Disgrace was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Gold Medal, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and highly commended for the FAW Christina Stead Award, The Age book of the Year and the National Book Council CUB Banjo Award. In 1999 it was translated into French and published by Editions du Reflet in France.
©1994 Robert Dessaix (P)2012 Australian Broadcasting CorporationListeners also enjoyed...
-
Spare
- By: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Narrated by: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 70,979
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 65,524
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 65,316
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Gutterball!
- By Jimmyjoejangles on 01-10-23
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,168
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,888
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,895
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."
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
Homeland Elegies
- A Novel
- By: Ayad Akhtar
- Narrated by: Ayad Akhtar
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,744
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,517
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,501
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
a mishmash of political theory and porn
- By LC on 02-06-21
By: Ayad Akhtar
-
Oh Miriam!
- Stories from an Extraordinary Life
- By: Miriam Margolyes
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 72
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
From being escorted off the Today programme (for saying what we were all thinking) to declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave; from Tales of the Unexpected to Graham Norton's sofa, she is our most loved and most outspoken national treasure. Oh Miriam! takes you inside both her head and her heart. Buckle up for the most irrepressible, hilarious and moving listen of 2023.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Borrow rather than Buy
- By OaklandBookworm on 11-10-23
By: Miriam Margolyes
-
The Magician
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 931
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 808
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 802
The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Terrific listening experience
- By M. Mead on 09-17-21
By: Colm Toibin
-
This Much Is True
- By: Miriam Margolyes
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,056
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 927
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 920
Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure. Now, at last, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story. And it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Simply Brilliant
- By Stuart Huddart on 09-21-21
By: Miriam Margolyes
-
Spare
- By: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Narrated by: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 70,979
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 65,524
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 65,316
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Gutterball!
- By Jimmyjoejangles on 01-10-23
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,168
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,888
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,895
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."
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
Homeland Elegies
- A Novel
- By: Ayad Akhtar
- Narrated by: Ayad Akhtar
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,744
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,517
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,501
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
a mishmash of political theory and porn
- By LC on 02-06-21
By: Ayad Akhtar
-
Oh Miriam!
- Stories from an Extraordinary Life
- By: Miriam Margolyes
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 72
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
From being escorted off the Today programme (for saying what we were all thinking) to declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave; from Tales of the Unexpected to Graham Norton's sofa, she is our most loved and most outspoken national treasure. Oh Miriam! takes you inside both her head and her heart. Buckle up for the most irrepressible, hilarious and moving listen of 2023.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Borrow rather than Buy
- By OaklandBookworm on 11-10-23
By: Miriam Margolyes
-
The Magician
- A Novel
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 931
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 808
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 802
The Magician opens in a provincial German city at the turn of the 20th century, where the boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative father, bound by propriety, and a Brazilian mother, alluring and unpredictable. Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Terrific listening experience
- By M. Mead on 09-17-21
By: Colm Toibin
-
This Much Is True
- By: Miriam Margolyes
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,056
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 927
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 920
Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure. Now, at last, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story. And it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Simply Brilliant
- By Stuart Huddart on 09-21-21
By: Miriam Margolyes
-
Between the Stops
- The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus
- By: Sandi Toksvig
- Narrated by: Sandi Toksvig
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 384
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 347
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 345
'Between the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living, to where I sometimes work - at the BBC, in the heart of the capital. It's not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it's the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it's my way'.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Funny, interesting and enlightening. A must listen.
- By Steve Killingback on 01-05-20
By: Sandi Toksvig
-
Quichotte
- A Novel
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 546
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 498
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 495
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
The Best Narration I have Ever Heard
- By Bubikon on 12-12-19
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Leaving the Witness
- Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life
- By: Amber Scorah
- Narrated by: Amber Scorah
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 719
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 634
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 632
A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture - and a whole new way of thinking - turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Astonishing book, delightfully read by the author
- By Lori DiCola on 06-04-19
By: Amber Scorah
-
Tiny Tales
- Stories of Romance, Ambition, Kindness, and Happiness
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii, Jamie Jackson, Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
From the original Greek financial crisis (when the profligate Gods of Olympus were punished by Odin and the other Norse Gods for their unchecked spending) to a handy unintended benefit of cosmetic surgery; from Pope Ron (the first Australian pope, who wants nothing more than to live quietly) to a rather droll cat named Stanley to Good President Wenceslas (benevolent leader of a snowy land) - these stories are by turns funny, poignant, and deliciously wicked, each one a gift begging to be unwrapped and enjoyed again and again.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Wonderful Collection of Pithy Stories
- By Joan Zak on 05-17-21
-
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 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 21
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Touched by the Sun
- My Friendship with Jackie
- By: Carly Simon
- Narrated by: Elizabeth McGovern
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 350
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 291
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 293
A chance encounter at a summer party on Martha’s Vineyard blossomed into an improbable but enduring friendship. Carly Simon and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis made an unlikely pair - Carly, a free and artistic spirit still reeling from her recent divorce, searching for meaning, new love, and an anchor; and Jackie, one of the most celebrated, meticulous, unknowable women in American history. Nonetheless, over the next decade their lives merged in inextricable and complex ways, and they forged a connection deeper than either could ever have foreseen.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
Self absorbed!
- By Stephanie l. on 03-19-20
By: Carly Simon
-
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
- How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life
- By: Sanford D. Greenberg, Art Garfunkel - introduction
- Narrated by: Art Garfunkel
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 105
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 105
The remarkable and inspiring story of a Columbia undergrad from a poor Jewish family who, after losing his eyesight to disease during his junior year, finds the power to break through the darkness and fulfill his vision for a life of great professional success and distinguished public service.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Fantastic!
- By Suzanne on 10-07-20
By: Sanford D. Greenberg, and others
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
The Eighth Life
- By: Nino Haratischvili
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 40 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 127
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 108
At the start of the 20th century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste....
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great Historical Fiction about Georgia and the Soviet Union
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-21
-
Borges and Me
- An Encounter
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 126
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls “a kind of novelistic memoir”, Jay Parini takes us back 50 years, when he fled the United States for Scotland - in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Super Sexist
- By Reader on 05-18-21
By: Jay Parini
-
The Good Immigrant
- 26 Writers Reflect on America
- By: Nikesh Shukla - editor, Chimene Suleyman - editor
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller, full cast
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 82
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
An urgent collection of essays by first- and second-generation immigrants, exploring what it's like to be othered in an increasingly divided America.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Loved it!
- By Kristie Smith on 11-06-19
By: Nikesh Shukla - editor, and others
-
Black Is the Body
- Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine
- By: Emily Bernard
- Narrated by: Emily Bernard
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 117
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
In these 12 deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up Black in the South with a family name inherited from a White man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a White man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily White New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautifully written
- By caradaya on 08-10-19
By: Emily Bernard
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
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 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 21
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
A Suitable Boy (Dramatised)
- By: Vikram Seth
- Narrated by: Ayesha Dharker, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 348
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 284
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 278
A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
would prefer unabridged naration
- By Tamshine on 07-07-11
By: Vikram Seth
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
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 60
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
-
Spare
- By: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Narrated by: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 70,979
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 65,524
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 65,316
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Gutterball!
- By Jimmyjoejangles on 01-10-23
-
Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
-
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 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 21
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
A Suitable Boy (Dramatised)
- By: Vikram Seth
- Narrated by: Ayesha Dharker, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, full cast
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 348
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 284
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 278
A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.
-
2 out of 5 stars
-
would prefer unabridged naration
- By Tamshine on 07-07-11
By: Vikram Seth
-
The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
-
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 60
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
-
Spare
- By: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Narrated by: Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 70,979
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 65,524
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 65,316
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Gutterball!
- By Jimmyjoejangles on 01-10-23
-
Pages for You
- The Pages for You Series, Book 1
- By: Sylvia Brownrigg
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. The 17-year-old, new to everything around her - college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life - is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A gorgeous listen
- By MissLynn on 03-09-20
By: Sylvia Brownrigg
-
Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 154
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 127
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 127
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
-
Letters
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 171
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 170
This volume of short essays and other pieces by C. S. Lewis is part of a larger collection, C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces. In addition to his many books, letters, and poems, C. S. Lewis wrote a great number of essays and shorter pieces on various subjects. He wrote extensively on Christian theology and the defense of faith but also on ethical issues and the nature of literature and storytelling. Within this audiobook is a treasure trove of Lewis' reflections on diverse topics.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Just Lewis
- By William on 02-07-21
By: C. S. Lewis
-
In the Light of What We Know
- By: Zia Haider Rahman
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 82
One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- A Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,168
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,888
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,895
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."
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Love, Politics, and Strange Bedfellows
- By Mel on 07-01-12
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,064
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 943
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 936
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.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
-
Burr
- A Novel (Narratives of Empire, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 939
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 804
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 804
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Finally! Vidal's Great Take on the Life of Burr
- By John Norton on 06-12-19
By: Gore Vidal
-
Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 77
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 76
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful memoir
- By Gabriel Smith on 07-25-22
By: Jan Morris
-
Maurice
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Peter Firth
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,155
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 988
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 991
'Ah for darkness...not the darkness of a house which coops up a man among furniture, but the darkness where he can be free!' Maurice Hall knows he must choose between living life in the shadows or denying himself a chance at love and fulfilment. Aware of his attraction to the same sex, in a time where it was considered unlawful and immoral to have homosexual desires, Maurice must decide whether to battle or submit to a prejudiced 20th-century English society.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Finally!!! It's past time!
- By Christopher P. on 11-18-10
By: E. M. Forster
-
The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 125
Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
-
Brodmaw Bay
- By: F.G. Cottam
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 93
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 88
Brodmaw Bay seems to be the perfect refuge for James Greer and his family. When his son is the victim of a brutal mugging, Greer wants to leave London - the sooner the better - for the charming old-fashioned fishing port he has just discovered. But was finding Brodmaw Bay more than a happy accident? What is the connection between the village and his beautiful wife? When his friendly new neighbours say they'd welcome some new blood - in a village where the same families seem to have lived for generations - are they telling the whole truth?
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Not Quite The Equal Of Its Promise
- By Flavius Krakdaddius on 08-23-12
By: F.G. Cottam
-
Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 82
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 65
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 65
Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
-
A Bend in the River
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 574
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 380
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 388
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautiful, insightful, troubling
- By Lawrence on 01-15-05
By: V. S. Naipaul