Despair
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Despair
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Lane
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By:
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Vladimir Nabokov
About this listen
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder.
One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 894
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 788
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 787
The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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Hunger
- By: Knut Hamsun
- Narrated by: Gunnar Cauthery
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
Verging on death, a starving, destitute writer navigates the cold and indifferent city of Kristiania in search of his next meal. Frenzied and fevered, he chews on stale bread, devours scraps of wood, and bites his own finger, sleeping under the stars in old, pungent blankets, until one day he is able to sell an article and buy some food - only for the cycle then to repeat itself....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book great narrator
- By Anonymous User on 08-27-20
By: Knut Hamsun
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The Master and Margarita
- By: Mikhail Bulgakov
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 238
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 199
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Story4 out of 5 stars 200
The Master and Margarita is one of the most famous and best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century, despite its surreal environment of talking cats, Satan and mysterious happenings. Naxos AudioBooks presents this careful abridgement of a new translation in an imaginative reading by the charismatic Julian Rhind-Tutt. With War and Peace and Crime and Punishment among the Naxos AudioBooks best-sellers, this too promises to be a front title.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very vivid and amazing writing style
- By Sina Beni on 05-04-22
By: Mikhail Bulgakov
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The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 3: End of the Chapter
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 30 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story5 out of 5 stars 19
The third volume of this gripping family saga, End of the Chapter, shifts to the Cherrells - cousins of the Forsytes by marriage. Young Dinny Cherrell in particular cherishes their ancestral home, Condaford Grange, which represents stability in a rapidly changing world. Through his depiction of the lives and loves of this family, Galsworthy throws a brilliant spotlight on the social and political upheavals of the 1930s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very enjoyable
- By Anonymous User on 11-28-22
By: John Galsworthy
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 95
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By Anonymous User on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Tim Robbins
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Set against a backdrop of jazz music, bootlegging, and lavish parties, The Great Gatsby is the story of Midwesterner Nick Carraway’s curious introduction to the decadent world of his mysterious, wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby, whose thirst for riches is matched only by his tragic obsession with the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. This dangerously propulsive tale of glitz and glamour continues to be relevant as listeners long for escapist novels—a chance to flee into Gatsby’s famed mansion and lose oneself in the rush of opulence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Alive and Wild! I finished it same day.
- By Anonymous User on 08-27-21
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Ghosts: Edith Wharton's Gothic Tales
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin, Jonathan Epstein, Corinna May, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4 out of 5 stars 146
Beneath the brilliance that was behind The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome was a dark side. A dark side which produced magnificent tales of the unseen influences in our lives, such as "Mr. Jones", "The Eyes", "Kerfol", "The Ladie's Maid's Bell", and "The Looking Glass".
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ghastly Shadows of the Feminine Condition
- By Anonymous User on 10-16-12
By: Edith Wharton
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Meet the Tiger
- A Simon “The Saint” Templar Novel
- By: Leslie Charteris
- Narrated by: John Rayburn
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance1 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
The fiction world of today needs a “Saint” more than it ever did. For years now that scene has been dominated by the “anti-heroes"—those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hyper-gadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas.
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4 out of 5 stars
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droning
- By Anonymous User on 04-27-24
By: Leslie Charteris
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Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions
- By: Mario Giordano, John Brownjohn
- Narrated by: Matt Addis
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 399
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 362
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Story4 out of 5 stars 360
Auntie Poldi, sassy, brassy, and 60, moves to Sicily for a quiet alcohol-fuelled retirement. A murder spoils her plans. This is the first novel in a charming new mystery series set in Sicily and laced with Italian sensuality and humor. It features an amateur sleuth, the sassy and foul-mouthed Auntie Poldi. Recently widowed Poldi moves to Sicily in order to quietly drink herself to death with a sea view, but fate intervenes. When she finds the corpse of a young man on the beach, his face blown off with a sawn-off shotgun, she becomes a potential suspect in his murder case.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Auntie Poldi Rocks!
- By Anonymous User on 04-01-18
By: Mario Giordano, and others
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 219
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 192
Gordon Comstock loathes dull, middle-class respectability and worship of money. He gives up a 'good job' in advertising to work part-time in a bookshop, giving him more time to write. But he slides instead into a self-induced poverty that destroys his creativity and his spirit. Only Rosemary, ever-faithful Rosemary, has the strength to challenge his commitment to his chosen way of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gordon's Grey World is Colored with Grant
- By Anonymous User on 09-25-11
By: George Orwell
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Bulldog Drummond
- By: Sapper
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; excitement essential. When Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC placed that advertisement, he was looking for adventure. What he finds is an international plot headed by the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic Narration
- By Anonymous User on 07-21-18
By: Sapper
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Something Fresh
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cecil
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 905
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 818
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 818
The one thing that could be expected to disturb the peace of life at Blandings is the incursion of imposters. Blandings has imposters like other houses have mice. On this occasion there are two of them--both intent on a dangerous enterprise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So That's Where "Upstairs, Downstairs" Came From!
- By Anonymous User on 01-26-12
By: P. G. Wodehouse
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Beware of Pity
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 243
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 212
In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of my favorite authors
- By Adeliese Baumann on 03-21-18
By: Stefan Zweig
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 387
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4 out of 5 stars 300
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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The Pale Blue Eye
- By: Louis Bayard
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 457
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 402
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 401
When the body of a suicide victim disappears at West Point Military Academy in 1831, only to be discovered hours later missing its heart, the Academy calls on retired detective Gus Landor to investigate. Landor is something of a legend among his peers, noted for an uncanny, Holmesian ability to read people. When Edgar Allan Poe, a new cadet, comes forth with his own cryptic conclusion—that the man Landor is looking for is a poet—Landor is intrigued and enlists Poe as his assistant.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Could not get through it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-15
By: Louis Bayard
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Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
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One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
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By: Vladimir Nabokov
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- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 149
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 130
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Anonymous User on 05-19-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Invitation to a Beheading
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 181
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