The Leopard
A Novel
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The Leopard
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Narrated by:
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Paul Woodson
About this listen
Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.
Although Giuseppe di Lampedusa had long had the book in mind, he began writing it only in his late fifties; he died at age sixty, soon after the manuscript was rejected as unpublishable. In his introduction, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Lampedusa's nephew, gives us a detailed history of the initial publication and the various editions that followed. And he includes passages Lampedusa wrote for the book that were omitted by the original Italian editors.
Here, finally, is the definitive edition of this brilliant and timeless novel.
©1960 William Collins & Co. Ltd. and Random House, Inc.; copyright renewed 1988 by William Collins PLC and Random House, Inc.; translation of foreword and appendix copyright 2007 by Guido Waldman (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 612
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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Ethan Frome
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 343
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 260
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Story4 out of 5 stars 264
Ethan Frome, a poor, downtrodden New England farmer, is trapped in a loveless marriage to his invalid wife, Zeena.When Zeena's young cousin Mattie arrives to help care for her, Ethan is immediately taken by Mattie's warm, vivacious personality. They fall desperately in love as he realizes how much is missing from his life and marriage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Slow is smooth and smooth is Fast until it isn't
- By Darwin8u on 05-29-13
By: Edith Wharton
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Magic Flutes
- By: Eva Ibbotson
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Spring, 1922. Tessa is a beautiful, tiny, dark-eyed princess who’s given up her duties to follow her heart and work backstage at the Viennese opera. She keeps her true identity a well-guarded secret, but when a wealthy, handsome Englishman discovers this bewitching urchin backstage, Tessa’s two lives collide - and in escaping her inheritance, she finds her destiny....
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4 out of 5 stars
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delightful story spoiled by the reader
- By A Lennox on 01-09-24
By: Eva Ibbotson
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Ada, or Ardor
- A Family Chronicle
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 169
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 147
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Story4 out of 5 stars 148
Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incest, a game the Whole Family Can Play
- By Darwin8u on 08-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Les Misérables
- Penguin Classics
- By: Christine Donougher, Victor Hugo, Robert Tombs
- Narrated by: Adeel Akhtar, Natalie Simpson, Adrian Scarborough, and others
- Length: 65 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 226
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 199
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Story5 out of 5 stars 197
Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Policeman, Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Great Translation, 5 Great Narrators
- By Rain Wiegartner on 06-07-20
By: Christine Donougher, and others
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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
- By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
- Narrated by: Edoardo Camponeschi
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4 out of 5 stars 32
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was the greatest writer ever to come from Brazil and one of the masters of nineteenth-century fiction. Susan Sontag calls him "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America", surpassing even Borges. Harold Bloom says that Machado is "the supreme black literary artist to date". And Allen Ginsburg calls him "another Kafka". And The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is his masterpiece, a dazzling, tragic, and profound novel that belongs next to the greatest works of his contemporaries Melville and Dostoevsky.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A hidden masterpiece
- By C. Park on 08-09-18
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The Stories of Eva Luna
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Pena
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
Immerse yourself in a world of love, vengeance, compassion, and irony with the evocative stories of Eva Luna. Author Isabel Allende introduced this well-loved character to audiences in her earlier novel, Eva Luna. Listen to Allende talk about the role of writing in her life in Giving Birth, Finding Form. This program also features Alice Walker and Jean Shinoda Bolen.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Better some Allende than no Allende
- By Perschon on 12-04-14
By: Isabel Allende
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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 Diane on 10-16-12
By: Edith Wharton
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Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Clare Higgins
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,076
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 903
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Story4 out of 5 stars 908
Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Magical
- By Mayca on 05-31-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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The Sisters of Versailles
- Mistresses of Versailles Series # 1
- By: Sally Christie
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 15 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 331
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4 out of 5 stars 297
Set against the lavish backdrop of the French Court in the early years of the 18th century, The Sisters of Versailles is the extraordinary tale of the five Nesle sisters - Louise, Pauline, Diane, Hortense, and Marie-Anne - four of whom became mistresses to King Louis XV. Their scandalous story is stranger than fiction but true in every shocking, amusing, and heartbreaking detail.Court intriguers are beginning to sense that young King Louis XV, after seven years of marriage, is tiring of his Polish wife.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best book I've listened to in ages
- By Dr. A. on 01-09-16
By: Sally Christie
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The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, Volume 1
- By: Anton Chekhov
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, (1860-1904), was born in Russia at Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. His name has become synonymous with a certain literary style much admired and widely copied since his death. Typically, a Chekhov story is a "mood", a state of mind, usually with regard to relations between one person and another. Under the influence of the constant, infinitesimal, and unforeseen pinpricks of life, there occurs a gradual transformation of that state of mind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Box of Chocolates
- By Darlene on 02-08-05
By: Anton Chekhov
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Letter from an Unknown Woman
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Heather Wood, K. Anderson Yancy
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 83
Immediately following the death of her young son, distraught and heartbroken, a woman sends a heart-wrenching letter to the only man she has ever loved, chronicling their love affair, opening with, "To you, who have never known me."
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3 out of 5 stars
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Tough 2 Hear With Background Music & Sound Effects
- By DK on 09-19-15
By: Stefan Zweig
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Merivel
- A Man of His Time
- By: Rose Tremain
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 129
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 128
In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles leaves him in despair, until a chance encounter with a seductive Swiss botanist allows him to dream of an honorable future. But back home, his loyalty and medical skill are about to be tested to the limit, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause havoc.
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5 out of 5 stars
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On Foolishness and Mortality
- By Ilana on 12-27-14
By: Rose Tremain
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Fathers and Sons
- By: Ivan Turgenev
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 735
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 666
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 664
When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naive son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by criticising the landowning way of life and by his outspoken determination to sweep away the traditional values of contemporary Russian society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The greatest novel I'll ever read
- By Dan Harlow on 07-07-13
By: Ivan Turgenev
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The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
- By: Nikolai Gogol
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a bizarre and colorful collection containing the finest short stories by the iconic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. From the witty and Kafkaesque "The Nose", where a civil servant wakes up one day to find his nose missing, to the moving and evocative "The Overcoat", about a reclusive man whose only ambition is to replace his old, threadbare coat, Gogol gives us a unique take on the absurd.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant writer, fantastic narration, plus TOC
- By Reader on 04-01-22
By: Nikolai Gogol
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 98
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Sicilia, all'epoca del tramonto borbonico. È di scena una famiglia della più alta aristocrazia, colta nel momento del trapasso del regime, mentre già incalzano i tempi nuovi. Accentrato intorno all'imponente personaggio del principe Fabrizio Salina, il romanzo offre un'immagine del clima di disincanto e di speranze deluse che seguì l'unificazione nazionale.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lampedusa
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
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5 out of 5 stars
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A beautiful story about memory
- By Gram D on 02-13-20
By: Steven Price
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Sicily
- An Island at the Crossroads of History
- By: John Julius Norwich
- Narrated by: Michael Healy
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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