
Mémoires d'Hadrien
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Narrated by:
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Stéphane Varupenne
About this listen
Cette œuvre est à la fois roman, histoire et poésie. En imaginant les Mémoires d'un grand empereur romain, l'auteur a voulu "refaire du dedans ce que les archéologues du XIXe siècle ont fait du dehors". Jugeant sans complaisance sa vie d'homme et son œuvre politique, Hadrien n'ignore pas que Rome finira un jour par périr, mais son réalisme romain et son humanisme hérité des Grecs lui font sentir l'importance de penser et de servir jusqu'au bout. "... Je me sentais responsable de la beauté du monde", dit ce héros dont les problèmes sont ceux de l'homme de tous les temps : les dangers mortels qui du dedans et du dehors confrontent les civilisations, la quête d'un accord harmonieux entre le bonheur et la "discipline auguste", entre l'intelligence et la volonté.
©1974 Marguerite Yourcenar (P)2019 Editions Gallimard; 1974 Editions GallimardListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
On the Day of the Dead, in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic and ruined man, is fatefully living out his last day, drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.
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Excellent...but not for everyone
- By Melinda on 12-07-10
By: Malcolm Lowry
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Journey to the End of the Night
- By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.
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Miserable Ride with Cynic Supreme
- By W Perry Hall on 03-15-17
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The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
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An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.
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The position of the feet during reading...
- By literate rose on 02-09-18
By: Italo Calvino
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To the Lighthouse
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nicole Kidman
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.
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A book that will challenge you to think.
- By Kelly on 04-23-17
By: Virginia Woolf
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Augustus
- By: John Williams
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A mere 18 years of age when his uncle, Julius Caesar, is murdered, Octavius Caesar prematurely inherits rule of the Roman Republic. Surrounded by men who are jockeying for power—Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony—young Octavius must work against the powerful Roman political machinations to claim his destiny as first Roman emperor. Sprung from meticulous research and the pen of a true poet, Augustus tells the story of one man’s dream to liberate a corrupt Rome.
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The son of Caesar calls to you.
- By Darwin8u on 05-16-15
By: John Williams
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Pale Fire
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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An amazing feat for such a unique novel
- By AmazonCustomer on 03-27-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Sea, the Sea
- By: Iris Murdoch, Mary Kinzie - introduction
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years.
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Murdoch Amazes
- By Sara on 08-30-17
By: Iris Murdoch, and others
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The Divine Comedy
- Penguin Classics
- By: Robin Kirkpatrick - translator, Dante Alighieri
- Narrated by: Jot Davies, Robin Kirkpatrick, Kristin Atherton
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, his ascent of Mount Purgatory and his encounter with his dead love Beatrice, and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption. This major translation is published here for the first time in a single volume.
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Solid, read with gusto
- By Tad Davis on 11-15-20
By: Robin Kirkpatrick - translator, and others
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Doctor Faustus
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.
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Literary self flagellation
- By Lipton101 on 02-13-25
By: Thomas Mann
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I, Claudius
- By: Robert Graves
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is one of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself. Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction.
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Unsurpassed, addictive brilliance
- By Chris on 06-09-09
By: Robert Graves
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Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching—yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.
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How Did This Escape Me?
- By E. Pearson on 11-23-11
By: Ralph Ellison
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 35 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
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Need to Disclose and Highlight Name of Translator
- By Charles B on 08-27-18
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Emperor of Rome
- Ruling the Ancient World
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
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Wasn't sure but won me over
- By John S. on 01-26-24
By: Mary Beard
What's not to like!
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Towering reputation but. . .
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In French
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