The Great Fortune

By: Olivia Manning

Narrated by: Harriet Walter

It was a strange, uncertain world that Harriet entered when she married Guy Pringle. Guy taught English at the university at Bucharest, a city of vivid contrasts, where professional beggars exist alongside the excesses of mid-European royalty and expatriate journalists with a taste for truffles and quails in aspic. Underlying this is a fitful awareness of the proximity of the Nazi threat to a Romania, which is enjoying an uneasy peace.

In this exotic landscape Harriet gets to know her new husband and to wonder at the complexity of the apparently simple man she had married.

©1960 The Estate of Olivia Manning (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Great reader. Wonderful fictionalized story based on author's life.

Liked it all but was puzzled by the abrupt finishes between the books. I listened to the entire trilogy. It was great! Would LOVE to hear Harriet reading the second trilogy, The Levant Trilogy. Please say it will happen audible!!

Interesting

I found this very interesting and enjoyed the narrator very much. Especially as poor old Yaki.

Such a fascinating picture of war descending in Europe,

I loved this book. I purchased copies of the three volumes after seeing Harriet Walter in Sense and Sensibility and knew I would love her narration but it’s taken me years to get round to hearing it. Liked it so much I started right back from the beginning and heard it twice - it’s so rich. What wonderful portraits and such a good sense of the world then as lived. What an insightful author - I’m only disappointed that the Cairo Trilogy is not available as well, I would read it in a heartbeat! Excellent story and atmosphere of a troubled Europe as the war starts, such a fascinating time so much worse than what we are living today - it helps me to bear the weight of the pandemic and our seclusion.

Great book, best audio performance I've heard

This narrator is very talented. She even does characters impersonating each other somewhat convincingly. It's pretty dramatic, as opposed to understated, but I'm very impressed.
The story and writing is wonderful, like Anthony Powell but with things happening. The author exhibits cool Olympian disdain for the characters so far. I haven't finished it yet.

Great Narration to start you off on this trilogy

What about Harriet Walter’s performance did you like?

I had picked up the Balkan Trilogy several times and never managed to get past the first few pages so I thought I'd try the audiobook and I was immediately hooked. Guy's cluelessness, Harriet's petulance, Yaki's pathetic Yaki-ness, is all perfectly rendered. Once hooked, I easily moved on to the second book without needing the audiobook. But for the third and final installment I returned to the audiobook as if meeting with old friends.

If you could take any character from The Great Fortune out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Poor Yaki--he always needs a meal. Although one worries buying him one meal would somehow bind you to him for life.

Any additional comments?

Like Tolkein's Lord off the Rings Trilogy, the books in The Balkan Trilogy don't really stand alone and need to be read as one long book.