Nostromo

A Tale of the Seaboard

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Antony Ferguson

One of the greatest political novels in any language, Nostromo reenacts the establishment of modern capitalism in a remote South American province locked between the Andes and the Pacific. In Sulaco, a harbor town in the imaginary South American republic of Costaguana, a vivid cast of characters is caught up in a civil war to decide whether its fabulously wealthy silver mine, funded by American money but owned by a third-generation English immigrant, can be preserved from the hands of venal politicians. Greed and corruption seep into the lives of everyone, and Nostromo, the principled foreman of the mine, is tested to the limit.

Public Domain (P)2011 Tantor

Critic reviews

"I had always thought that there were books you read to entertain yourself and classic books to educate you, but with Nostromo I realised a book could be both." (Billy Ivory, Nottingham Evening Post)

It’s a difficult book for sure.

The story is good, an Italian expatriate goes to a fictional So. American country and becomes a famous seaman, hero to the locals but is doomed by the draw of the riches of silver from local silver mine. You just have to listen close and carefully to get it all.

Good novel, bad audiobook

This is a solid novel by Conrad, considered his "big epic" by many. The quality of this audiobook is, however, quite bad. The narrator appears to have put little to no effort into preparing for this work. He reads the lines out in a monotonous tone with awkward, random cadence and spacing as if he is confused by the pronunciation. Its often difficult to follow entire sentences. On top of this, the narrator appears to have no comprehension of Spanish pronunciation. You don't need to speak the language, but if you're going to narrate an epic work set in Latin America, with hundreds of names, places, titles, and other bits of vocabulary all in Spanish, maybe it's worth taking an hour or two to figure out how those are pronounced. There were times when it felt as though words like "capitaz" (really tough one, I know...) were 5 or 6 syllables as the reader was struggling to get it out. Overall, it makes it almost impossible to focus on the prose or story.

If you're looking for this title, I highly recommend that you pick a different rendition.

Page-turning masterpiece garbled by narrator

Deeply disappointed by the wretched performance here: Antony Ferguson repeatedly trips over Conrad's magnificent prose, clumsily cutting phrases off and displaying an astounding lack of understanding of the sentence structure, let alone its drama. Within a few pages, I grew so annoyed by his tiresome mannerisms -- or more likely, lack of adequate preparation, where he's not able to fake it by "sight reading" - that I just gave up. Such a shame, this mismatch of narrator with a fantastic book.

Boring narration — find another version

Antony Ferguson reads every sentence with the same rising and falling cadence — no sense of character, drama, or even a basic sense of interest in the story. I’ve stuck with some pretty awful narrators in the past just to hear a good story but this one broke me. I moved over to the Nigel Anthony version and am happy so far.