The Man Who Couldn't Die - The Tale of an Authentic Human Being
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The Man Who Couldn't Die - The Tale of an Authentic Human Being
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Narrated by:
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Al. Bernstein
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By:
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Olga Slavnikova
About this listen
In the chaos of early-1990s Russia, the wife and stepdaughter of a paralyzed veteran conceal the Soviet Union’s collapse from him in order to keep him - and his pension - alive until it turns out the tough old man has other plans.
Olga Slavnikova’s The Man Who Couldn’t Die tells the story of how two women try to prolong a life - and the means and meaning of their own lives - by creating a world that doesn’t change, a Soviet Union that never crumbled. After her stepfather’s stroke, Marina hangs Brezhnev’s portrait on the wall, edits the Pravda articles read to him, and uses her media connections to cobble together entire newscasts of events that never happened. Meanwhile, her mother, Nina Alexandrovna, can barely navigate the bewildering new world outside, especially in comparison to the blunt reality of her uncommunicative husband. As Marina is caught up in a local election campaign that gets out of hand, Nina discovers that her husband is conspiring as well - to kill himself and put an end to the charade.
Masterfully translated by Marian Schwartz, The Man Who Couldn’t Die is a darkly playful vision of the lost Soviet past and the madness of the post-Soviet world that uses Russia’s modern history as a backdrop for an inquiry into larger metaphysical questions.
©2001 Olga Slavnikova (P)2019 Heraclon Publishing CanadaListeners also enjoyed...
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A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Overly ambitious
- By Placeholder on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
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Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Folded Leaf
- By: William Maxwell
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
Here is a classic novel from one of our most honored writers - the author of such acclaimed works as So Long, See You Tomorrow and All the Days and Nights. The Folded Leaf is the serenely observed yet deeply moving story of two boys finding one another in the Midwest of the 1920s, when childhood lasted longer than it does today and even adults were more innocent of what life could bring.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Midwestern Misfits
- By David on 03-17-15
By: William Maxwell
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,556
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,379
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,375
For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
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The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
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Monday Starts on Saturday
- By: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Andrew Bromfield - translator, and others
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 187
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 162
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Story4 out of 5 stars 162
Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving north to meet some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of hitchhikers who persuade him to take a job at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional institute involve all sorts of magical beings - a wish-granting fish, a tree mermaid, a cat who can remember only the beginnings of stories, a dream-interpreting sofa, and many more.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Maybe I should have read this one.
- By M. Gage on 08-08-18
By: Arkady Strugatsky, and others
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The German House
- By: Annette Hess
- Narrated by: Nina Franoszek
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess’ international best seller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator - caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power - as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation’s past.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Just ok
- By Jennifer on 12-16-19
By: Annette Hess
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The Heart
- By: Maylis de Kerangal, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4 out of 5 stars 44
The Heart takes place over the 24 hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow! What a story!
- By Jan on 02-27-20
By: Maylis de Kerangal, and others
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Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Traitor
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 243
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 216
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 212
In the summer of 1942, as war rages across Europe, a series of anonymous leaflets appears around the University of Munich, speaking out against escalating Nazi atrocities. The leaflets are hidden in public places, or mailed to addresses selected at random from the phone book. Natalya Petrovich, a student, knows who is behind the leaflets - a secret group called the White Rose, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends. As a volunteer nurse on the Russian front, Natalya witnessed the horrors of war first-hand. She willingly enters the White Rose's circle....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not all the Germans are guilty.
- By Judy Harley on 09-18-20
By: V.S. Alexander
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Life for Sale
- By: Yukio Mishima
- Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots - even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the crosshairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Book is good - Narration is just terrible
- By Vyacheslav Varlakov on 03-12-21
By: Yukio Mishima
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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Dry Bones
- By: Peter May
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,084
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,884
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,879
What happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher at the École Nationale d’Administration, who trained some of France’s best and brightest as future prime ministers and presidents, vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. This ten-year-old mystery inspires a bet—one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse, France, instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging hero, stellar narration
- By Janice on 11-01-13
By: Peter May
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The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 31 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
From Vladimir Nabokov, the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and the 1950s, these 68 tales — 14 of which have been translated into English for the first time - display all the shades of Nabokov’s imagination.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Kaleidoscope of Nabokov Bábochkas
- By Darwin8u on 01-11-15
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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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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Cleo
- How a Small Black Cat Helped Heal a Family
- By: Helen Brown
- Narrated by: Helen Brown
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
Helen Brown wasn't a cat person, but her nine-year-old son Sam was. So when Sam heard a woman telling his mum that her cat had just had kittens, Sam pleaded to go and see them. Helen's heart melted as Sam held one of the kittens in his hands with a look of total adoration. In a trice the deal was done - the kitten would be delivered to them when she was big enough to leave her mother. A week later, the family suffered a terrible tragedy. Totally traumatised by it, Helen completely forgot all about the kitten until a little black bundle of fur was delivered to her doorstep.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By pgriswold6fe9 on 01-26-23
By: Helen Brown
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Blood Wedding
- By: Pierre Lemaitre, Frank Wynne - translator
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
Sophie Duguet is losing her grip. Haunted by visions from her past of her loving husband, who committed suicide after a car accident. One morning she wakes to find Leo, the child in her care, strangled in his bed by Sophie's own shoelaces. She can remember nothing of the night before. Could she really have killed him? She flees in panic, but this only cements her guilt in the eyes of the law. Not long afterwards it happens again - she wakes with blood on her hands, with no memory of the murder committed.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Twisted
- By SH on 02-04-24
By: Pierre Lemaitre, and others