An Artist of the Floating World
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An Artist of the Floating World
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Narrated by:
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David Case
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By:
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Kazuo Ishiguro
About this listen
From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day
In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.
Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world" - the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink - offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,023
Damian Baxter is hugely wealthy and dying. He lives alone in a big house in Surrey, England, looked after by a chauffeur, butler, cook and housemaid. He has but one concern--his fortune in excess of 500 million and who should inherit it on his death.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Read Snobs instead
- By cristina on 02-14-13
By: Julian Fellowes
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The Enchanted April
- By: Elizabeth von Arnim
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 818
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 603
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 602
This is a journey of both escape and discovery for four exquisitely different women, a month of bliss and privacy for four weary souls. Their refuge on the Italian Riviera provides the perfect backdrop for a story about the search for spiritual harmony within and without.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book, excellent narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 02-26-05
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The Castle
- By: Franz Kafka
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Story4 out of 5 stars 121
A land-surveyor, known only as K., arrives at a small village permanently covered in snow and dominated by a castle to which access seems permanently denied. K.'s attempts to discover why he has been called constantly run up against the peasant villagers, who are in thrall to the absurd bureaucracy that keeps the castle shut, and the rigid hierarchy of power among the self-serving bureaucrats themselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A masculine and coquettish reading
- By Alan on 05-27-12
By: Franz Kafka
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The Unsettled Dust
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Robert Aickman, the supreme master of the supernatural, brings together eight stories in which strange things happen that the reader is unable to predict. His characters are often lonely and middle-aged, but all have the same thing in common: they are brought to the brink of an abyss that shows how terrifyingly fragile our piece of mind actually is. 'The Unsettled Dust', 'The House of the Russians', 'No Stronger Than a Flower', 'The Cicerones' and 'Ravissante' first appeared in the Sub Rosa collection in 1968, but the stories were published together as The Unsettled Dust in 1990.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfectly read, sheds new light on this work
- By James Townsend on 04-10-17
By: Robert Aickman
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The Bostonians
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Taking place in Boston, Massachusetts, a decade after the Civil War, The Bostonians tells the story of two cousins who battle for the affections of and control over an enchanting prophetess. While visiting his cousin Olive Chancellor, a fierce feminist deeply involved in the Suffragette movement, Basil Ransom, a Confederate Civil War veteran turned lawyer, attends a speech by the talented young orator Verena Tarrant. Basil quickly falls in love with Verena, although he disagrees with her politics; Olive, however, sees her as the future of the women's rights movement.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A satire that turns tragic
- By Tad Davis on 08-23-20
By: Henry James
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The Ambassadors
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4 out of 5 stars 63
Lambert Strether, a mild, middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs. Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Henry James can be hard to follow but worth it
- By Patricia on 01-29-13
By: Henry James
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In the Light of What We Know
- By: Zia Haider Rahman
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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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.
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1 out of 5 stars
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dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
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Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust, Scott Moncrieff - translator
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Swann’s Way is the first and best-known part of Proust’s monumental work, Remembrance of Things Past. Often compared to a symphony, this complex masterpiece is ideally suited for audio. Listening lets you appreciate anew the incredible beauty of Proust’s language and the uniqueness of his style. The novel’s narrator, Marcel, finds the true meaning of experience in memories stimulated by some random object or event.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful, BUT
- By Michael on 02-04-13
By: Marcel Proust, and others
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The Turmoil
- By: Booth Tarkington
- Narrated by: Harry Shaw
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
Bigger, newer, faster. Demolish and rebuild, then demolish and rebuild again. Smoke, soot, and noise are the badges of prosperity, and growth is for growth's sake.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fast and heartwarming
- By dfjord on 08-06-24
By: Booth Tarkington
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The Jewel in the Crown
- Raj Quartet
- By: Paul Scott
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 272
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 240
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 240
In the India of 1942, two rapes take place simultaneously - that of an English girl in Mayapore, and that of India by the British. In each, physical violence, racial animosity, the coercion of the weak by the strong all play their part, but playing a part too are love, affection, loyalty, and recognition that the last division of all to be overcome is the colour of the skin.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is one to get
- By Jeremy on 10-28-14
By: Paul Scott
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Heat and Dust
- By: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
- Narrated by: Julie Christie
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
In 1923 the beautiful, spoiled, and bored Olivia, married to Douglas and his career in the Indian Civil Service, outrages the English and Indian communities by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, Douglas’s granddaughter, armed with Olivia’s letters, goes back to the heat and dust and squalor of the bazaars to find out for herself how Olivia could have been so affected by India that she turned her back on her own country.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Short, Rich Novel
- By David P on 01-23-22
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To Sir, with Love
- By: E. R. Braithwaite
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story5 out of 5 stars 75
With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned. When his efforts to reach these troubled students are met with threats, suspicion, and derision, Braithwaite takes a radical new approach. He will treat his students as people poised to enter the adult world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book!
- By Lionsroar on 12-08-18
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The Island
- By: Victoria Hislop
- Narrated by: Emma Powell
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story5 out of 5 stars 82
On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding plans a trip to her mother's childhood home in Plaka, Greece hoping to unravel Sofia's hidden past. Given a letter to take to Sofia's old friend, Fotini, Alexis is promised that through Fotini, she will learn more. Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone's throw from the deserted island of Spinalonga—Greece's former leper colony. Fotini reveals the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters, and a family rent by tragedy, war, and passion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Will listen to it again someday
- By RN on 01-07-23
By: Victoria Hislop
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Cold Hand in Mine
- By: Robert Aickman
- Narrated by: Reece Shearsmith
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ("Pages from a Young Girl's Journal") but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Aickman is unique
- By Stark on 08-19-23
By: Robert Aickman
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Mrs. Tim of the Regiment
- By: D. E. Stevenson
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
Vivacious, young Hester Christie tries to run her home like clockwork, as would befit the wife of British Army officer, Tim Christie. However hard Mrs Tim strives for seamless living amidst the other army wives, she is always moving flat-out to remember groceries, rule lively children, side-step village gossip and placate her husband with bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade. Left alone for months at a time whilst her husband is with his regiment, Mrs Tim resolves to keep a diary of events large and small in her family life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life as a military wife
- By Jerri C on 03-09-13
By: D. E. Stevenson