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- Narrado por: Ralph Cosham
- Duración: 31 h y 46 m
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National Book Award, Fiction, 2005
In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the 20th century.Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional: a young German who joins the SS to expose its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under Stalinist oppression. Through these and other lives, Vollmann offers a daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.
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Armageddon
- A Novel of Berlin
- De: Leon Uris
- Narrado por: Graham Rowat
- Duración: 24 h y 58 m
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At the end of World War II, American army officer Captain Sean O’Sullivan is commissioned with rebuilding Berlin. Reeling from the death of his brothers at German hands and faced with the direct horrors of the Holocaust, O’Sullivan struggles against his animosity towards the nation he is helping restore. Meanwhile, Soviet forces blockade Germany in a bid for power, and the Western Allies must unite to prevent a communist takeover. When the airlift begins, the Allies find their deepest convictions tested as they fight against a threat even more dangerous than Hitler.
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Legendary author
- De Robert ONeill en 02-13-19
De: Leon Uris
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The Quiet American
- De: Graham Greene
- Narrado por: Joseph Porter
- Duración: 6 h y 41 m
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Alden Pyle, an idealistic young American, is sent to Vietnam to promote democracy amidst the intrigue and violence of the French war with the Vietminh, while his friend, Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, looks on.
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Terrible narrator nearly derails Greene novel.
- De Richard en 07-12-12
De: Graham Greene
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A Place of Greater Safety
- De: Hilary Mantel
- Narrado por: Jonathan Keeble
- Duración: 33 h y 52 m
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It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden - and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter.
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Disaster
- De Frank Dudley Berry Jr. en 08-01-13
De: Hilary Mantel
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Palace of Tears
- De: Julian Leatherdale
- Narrado por: Ming-Zhu Hii
- Duración: 15 h y 40 m
- Versión completa
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The dazzling story of family, passion, secrets and vengeance, woven through the hardships of both World Wars and revealing the intriguing history of the Palace, the opulent Blue Mountains hotel famed for its luxury and mysterious owner. A sweltering summer's day, January 1914: the charismatic and ruthless Adam Fox throws a lavish birthday party for his son and heir at his elegant clifftop hotel in the Blue Mountains. Everyone is invited except Angie, the girl from the cottage next door.
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Distractingly bad acting by narrator!
- De Bunny en 01-30-16
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Sapphire Skies
- De: Belinda Alexandra
- Narrado por: Caroline Lee
- Duración: 15 h y 8 m
- Versión completa
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2000: The wreckage of a downed WWII fighter plane is discovered in the forests near Russia's Ukrainian border.The aircraft belonged to Natalya Azarova, ace pilot and pin-up girl for Soviet propaganda, but the question of her fate remains unanswered. Was she a German spy who faked her own death, as the Kremlin claims? Her lover, Valentin Orlov, now a highly-decorated general, refuses to believe it. Lily, a young Australian woman, has moved to Moscow to escape from tragedy.
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A Disturbing Disappointment
- De Sara en 08-07-14
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Behind Enemy Lines
- The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany
- De: Marthe Cohn, Wendy Holden
- Narrado por: Kirsten Potter
- Duración: 10 h y 30 m
- Versión completa
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Marthe Cohn was a young Jewish woman living just across the German border in France when Hitler rose to power. Her family sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis, including Jewish children sent away by their terrified parents. But soon her homeland was also under Nazi rule. As the Nazi occupation escalated, Marthe's sister was arrested and sent to Auschwitz and the rest of her family was forced to flee to the south of France. Always a fighter, Marthe joined the French Army and became a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army.
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Amazing story of a fighter and survivor
- De Magalie Busch en 05-06-19
De: Marthe Cohn, y otros
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The Early Ayn Rand
- A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction (Revised Edition)
- De: Ayn Rand
- Narrado por: Bernadette Dunne
- Duración: 19 h y 32 m
- Versión completa
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This remarkable, newly revised collection of Ayn Rand's early fiction ranges from beginner's exercises to excerpts from early versions of We the Living and The Fountainhead. Arranged chronologically, from 1926 through 1940, these works allow readers to follow the extraordinary trajectory of Rand's literary and intellectual growth, from a 21-year-old Russian immigrant struggling to master English to the brilliant prose stylist and sophisticated philosopher she was to become in her mature work.
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Want more Rand? Here it is.
- De John en 12-03-11
De: Ayn Rand
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HHhH
- De: Laurent Binet
- Narrado por: John Lee
- Duración: 10 h y 48 m
- Versión completa
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HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible-until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service-killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.
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Himlers Hirn heisst Heydrich
- De Darwin8u en 02-02-13
De: Laurent Binet
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War and Peace (AmazonClassics Edition)
- De: Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude - translator, Aylmer Maude - translator
- Narrado por: Edoardo Ballerini
- Duración: 55 h y 30 m
- Versión completa
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In early nineteenth-century Russia, the threat of Napoleon’s invasion looms, and the lives of millions are about to be changed forever. This includes Pierre Bezúkhov, illegitimate son of an aristocrat; Andrew Bolkónski, ambitious military scion; and Natásha Rostóva, compassionate daughter of a nobleman. All of them are unprepared for what lies ahead. Alongside their fellow compatriots - a catalog of enduring literary characters - Pierre, Andrew, and Natásha will be irrevocably torn between fate and free will.
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Tremendous narration
- De steve thomas en 08-14-20
De: Leo Tolstoy, y otros
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Sophie's Choice
- De: William Styron
- Narrado por: Norman Snow
- Duración: 2 h y 53 m
- Versión resumida
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In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman. She has a terrible wound in her past, one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
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THIS IS ABRIDGED
- De J. Flynn en 07-25-16
De: William Styron
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The Dying Grass
- A Novel of the Nez Perce War
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Henry Strozier
- Duración: 53 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
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In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the US Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from Northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border.
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It is all the same. Let us kill, die or ride away
- De Darwin8u en 05-24-17
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The Lucky Star
- A Novel
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Abby Craden
- Duración: 25 h y 21 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
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Historia
After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.
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No Immediate Danger
- Carbon Ideologies, Volume One
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Sean Runnette
- Duración: 16 h y 31 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come - the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort.
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Look at the brightside always and die in a dream!
- De Darwin8u en 04-14-19
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The Recognitions
- De: William Gaddis
- Narrado por: Nick Sullivan
- Duración: 47 h y 55 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- De andrew en 11-17-10
De: William Gaddis
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Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness
- Volume One: Photographs: 1980-2020 (Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness Series, Book 1)
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Paul Heitsch
- Duración: 3 h y 21 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
The celebrated author of over twenty-five books, Vollmann's equally ambitious and prolific career as a photographer, printmaker, and painter reflects the artist's deep interest in people existing on the margins, a profound empathy for his subjects, and the humility and generosity to meet them on their terms. In Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness, a series of essays commissioned especially for this book lays out Vollmann's views on what photographs can and should say.
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2666
- De: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrado por: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, y otros
- Duración: 39 h y 15 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- De William en 01-05-10
De: Roberto Bolaño
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The Dying Grass
- A Novel of the Nez Perce War
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Henry Strozier
- Duración: 53 h y 59 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
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Historia
In this new installment in his acclaimed series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the Nez Perce War, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the US Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn as they fled from Northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border.
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It is all the same. Let us kill, die or ride away
- De Darwin8u en 05-24-17
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The Lucky Star
- A Novel
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Abby Craden
- Duración: 25 h y 21 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
-
Historia
After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.
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No Immediate Danger
- Carbon Ideologies, Volume One
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Sean Runnette
- Duración: 16 h y 31 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
-
Historia
In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come - the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort.
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Look at the brightside always and die in a dream!
- De Darwin8u en 04-14-19
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The Recognitions
- De: William Gaddis
- Narrado por: Nick Sullivan
- Duración: 47 h y 55 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
-
Historia
Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- De andrew en 11-17-10
De: William Gaddis
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Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness
- Volume One: Photographs: 1980-2020 (Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness Series, Book 1)
- De: William T. Vollmann
- Narrado por: Paul Heitsch
- Duración: 3 h y 21 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
-
Historia
The celebrated author of over twenty-five books, Vollmann's equally ambitious and prolific career as a photographer, printmaker, and painter reflects the artist's deep interest in people existing on the margins, a profound empathy for his subjects, and the humility and generosity to meet them on their terms. In Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness, a series of essays commissioned especially for this book lays out Vollmann's views on what photographs can and should say.
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2666
- De: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrado por: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, y otros
- Duración: 39 h y 15 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Narración:
-
Historia
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- De William en 01-05-10
De: Roberto Bolaño
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Austerlitz
- De: W. G. Sebald
- Narrado por: Richard Matthews
- Duración: 7 h y 10 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
Austerlitz, the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by "one of the most gripping writers imaginable" ( The New York Review of Books), is the story of a man's search for the answer to his life's central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, one Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him.
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To each their own
- De Sebastian Romero en 04-23-20
De: W. G. Sebald
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The Dog of the South
- De: Charles Portis
- Narrado por: David Aaron Baker
- Duración: 8 h y 1 m
- Versión completa
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Historia
Charles Portis has drawn widespread critical acclaim for his inventive prose. In The Dog of the South, Ray Midge is on the trail of his wife, Norma, who’s headed for Mexico with her ex-husband. On the way Ray meets the eccentric Dr. Reo Symes, a man with more get-rich-quick schemes than common sense. Together, they’ll have to overcome tropical storms, grifters, and plenty of car trouble en route to their destination - wherever that may be.
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America's Gogol
- De Darwin8u en 03-21-16
De: Charles Portis
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Life and Fate: The Complete Series (Dramatised)
- De: Vasily Grossman
- Narrado por: Kenneth Branagh, David Tennant
- Duración: 7 h y 35 m
- Grabación Original
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General
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Narración:
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Historia
Kenneth Branagh stars in BBC Radio 4's ambitious eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman's epic masterpiece set during the Battle of Stalingrad. This powerful work, completed in 1960, charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the KGB placed the manuscript under arrest and Grossman was informed his book would not be published for at least 200 years.
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Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate
- De Alifa en 02-13-12
De: Vasily Grossman
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Pale Fire
- De: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrado por: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld
- Duración: 9 h y 19 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
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
- De AmazonCustomer en 03-27-12
De: Vladimir Nabokov
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Gravity's Rainbow
- De: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrado por: George Guidall
- Duración: 37 h y 21 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- De Jefferson en 07-04-16
De: Thomas Pynchon, y otros
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Ghost Wars
- The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
- De: Steve Coll
- Narrado por: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Duración: 26 h y 48 m
- Versión completa
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General
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Historia
The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.
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An Exceptional Accomplishment
- De Joe en 11-08-13
De: Steve Coll
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Lo que los oyentes dicen sobre Europe Central
Calificaciones medias de los clientesReseñas - Selecciona las pestañas a continuación para cambiar el origen de las reseñas.
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Total
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Ejecución
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Historia
- M. Powell
- 04-26-14
Powerful
Any additional comments?
The book is difficult to sum up, but it is a powerful work and well worth the time it takes. Vollmann is an amazing writer, and should have more works on audible. I recommend reading this alongside Postwar by Tony Judt, with the same narrator.
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Ejecución
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Historia
- R. Klein
- 05-15-19
Might appeal to Soviet history experts
This is a long book, and I often found myself wondering if I really needed to finish it, when I spent so much effort trying to understand exactly what was happening, to whom.
It's a glimpse into the struggle between Communism and Nazism/fascism, and the people who were caught in the middle. One of the central characters is the Russian composer, Shostakovitch. His story seems to pick up, and then fade throughout the book.
The book is nearly 32 hours long, and I felt like I spent a good bit of it wondering who the narrator, or narrators (not the reader) were. From whose point of view or perspective were these stories told? Nearly 32 hours later, I still don't know for sure.
The story shifts around quite a bit, and describes life within states struggling to survive, or conquer. Namely, Russia and Germany during the years of WW II and the post-war era. In that respect, it provides insight into life on the ground for citizens caught up in the political struggles that surround them.
Not being a student of history, I looked up some of the characters on-line while listening to the book, and found that those characters and events were factual. Other aspects of the story - the loves and intimacies of the characters, I assume are fictionalizations created by the author. Perhaps they are based in factual events.
I found the line of the story, or stories in this book quite difficult to follow. There would be sections of the book describing particular players and events during the war that kept my interest for extended periods, and this was what kept me going through to the end. But there were long sequences when I felt lost in the book, too. And those where the sections that kept me questioning why I was even continuing to listen.
The book does describe the terrible and unstable circumstances of daily life. The terrors perpetrated by both Stalin and Hitler upon populations wishing only to continue day-to-day life. The senseless death of millions. The book provides insight into and understanding of cultural differences, too, between Germany and Russia, and the incentives of soldiers and civilians to fight during the terrible war years.
A central theme of the book seems to be the constant spying and surveillance of everyone. The constant uncertainty of whom to trust, and what to say in a sea of constantly changing, swirling waves of political realities. The difficulty of daily life, the starvation and deprivation of citizens is also examined in detail, looking at the lives of specific people in different walks of life.
I thought there were valuable insights, too, into the forces driving both Hitler and Stalin, and how those drove the war, but also the national capacity to wage, and to win a war.
Shostakovitch seems like a central character, at least to me, in no small part because of his position as an accomplished and famous composer, always caught in a web of changing and unidentifiable political directives. His life and times seem to have been very much defined by the political powers and demands around him, as he tried to walk the tightrope in the middle, and write his music to express his own views of what was happening around him. Often, the successes and problems were merely matters of interpretation, and he seemed well suited to be a chameleon when it came to interpretation, that allowed him, against all odds, to continue working in the Communist state during, and long after the war ended. A prime example of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
I gave this book three stars because I thought it contained important historical information I was never aware of, and helped with an understanding of that history and the two countries involved. But that value was tempered by the fact that there were so many places in the book I just wasn't sure of what was going on, who it was happening to, or who was telling the story.
In the end, if the book ever answered the oft repeated question, "What was that sound?" I guess I missed it.
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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona
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Total
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Ejecución
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Historia
- Darwin8u
- 06-02-16
The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
"We have a Motherland and they have a Fatherland. Their child is Europe Central."
― William T. Vollmann, Europe Central
This book reminds me of some mad Nazi experiment (or Soviet torture) grafting the madness of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and the darkness of Littell's The Kindly Ones. From the first chapter it grabs you grotesquely by the balls and just won't let go. Vollmann wants to hear you scream and then wants to write the score of your scream, the ghost notes of your warped night tremors.
The spine, the backbone, of this novel is woven the life/stories/stutters of Dmitry Shostakovich (yes THAT Shostakovich) writing his opus of lust, his opus of war, his opus of death. Fighting, passively, always passively against the crushing weight of Soviet oppression. The more the institution would grind on him, push him down, the more his art would squirt out. Art finds a way. There is the love triangle between Shostakovich and Elena Konstantinovskaya and Roman Karmen. This is Vollmann bending history to fit his novel. He isn't trying for close. He isn't aiming for clarity. He is composing with this novel. He is grooving.
The way I floated with this novel was to imagine it as a giant expressionist painting with Shostakovich in the center (or, perhaps, a symphony or musical development? Others have said yes, so I'd recommending reading their reviews if you prefer a symphony to an expressionist painting). It is full of demons and parables. Full of Totenkopfverbändes decorated with rubies, snow, skeletons, zombies, bombs and planes. There are mass graves and one can get quickly lost in death and the cold. There is a certain direction, only because time and history both have a direction, to the painting. It is scrolling left to right. But reading Vollmann is not a journey of art. It is a dream, a nightmare. It is a primal scream trying to clear out the cobwebs of the 20th century. It is Hieronymus Bosch's Purgatory, Hell, and all three panels of the triptych Garden of Earthly Delights sewn together with teeth, hair, and cobwebs and repainted by a German Expressionist or Soviet "nonconformist" artist.
'Europe Central' isn't history, but history isn't history. When so many people were killed, buried, burned -- we lose all sense of identity and truth. In Central Europe/Europe Central during that period right before, during, and after WWII myth seems almost as appropriate as any official history. The demons that whistle to you at night are just as convincing as the frozen chickens of day.
Again, I'm trying to wrap my head around it all. It is crazy. I am crazy. Two of the quotes from the book that helped me the most were:
"According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, our planet's most pronounced topographical features compromise an approximate mirror image of the crust's underside. The steppes of the Ukraine thus roof the crating platforms which replicates them, while the Ural Mountains not only project into the sky, but in equal measure stab down like gabblers trained upon the magma on which our contest uneasily slither. To me, the thought that this world is doubled within its own red, liquid hell is a profoundly unnerving one. Chaos seethes beneath my feet" (page 694).
“Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because its author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?” (27).
I will end this now, before I get swallowed up again by Vollmann's Airlift Idylls and Steel in Motion one more time and fail to find my way to the surface again. One note on the audio. It would have been perfect, but there were just a bit too many edits/corrections in the finished audiobook. A word was replaced, pronounced, etc., by a different reader (or a different sounding reader). It was a bit distracting.
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esto le resultó útil a 21 personas
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Historia
- Jason
- 08-29-22
Life-changing novel, Awful Narration but, U know
This novel is easily the closest book of 21st century to achieve similiar successes as War & Peace. Each chapter follows a real person and their experience w/ Totalitarian Gov't in 20th century.
Just mind-blowing but with that said, narration & production therein was Simply Awful. You can easily tell where the reader stops and picks upicks up, where he uses the wrong name and later inserts the name of the city or a person said correctly. That correctly. It gets quite annoying but if you have the text, it's easy to get over.
Please, take the dive and be amazed but give this novel at least 4-5 hours as it's not an easy read. nor are most of the worlda greatest pieces of literature.
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- Armen
- 03-15-09
A Must Listen
This is a very fine audio book - well read and engrossing. I have given it one less star than the ultimate because you cannot listen to a book like this will all the concentration necesary.
Long, sometimes repetative, often messmerizing - Europe Central tells the story of men and women caught up in the greatest struggle of the 20th century - the struggle of the individual to survive in a dictatorial world.
Each of the central characters are given his or her own section - book length parts - to tell thier stories. The Russian composer D. Shostakovich is the spine of the book. His story is a primer on how an artist survives in sea of repression: learn to hold your breath under water. Others make significant appearances including General Paulus in a haunting set peice on the Battle of Stalingrad. The "Sleepwalker" (Hitler) and his Russian counterpart - Stalin - pervade the work as they did the first half of the 20th century - and still influence how the world operates.
This book is a lenghty journey - you will not be the same at its end as you were at its start. Isn't that what great literature is all about?
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Historia
- Amazon Customer
- 01-05-19
Extraordinary
Just an extraordinary thing - difficult to explain. But it does capture people at the extremes of history. Very well narrated.
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Historia
- Drawing a Blank
- 10-10-18
Great story, subpar narration
While the story of Europe Central is great the narration is sorely lacking. Ralph Cosham is a narrating legend but here he turns in a bland and unemotive performance that really robs the story of a lot of its power. Worse than that though is that there are frequent and noticeable line replacements throughout the book that are distracting and irritating. The replacement lines often sound quieter, fuzzier, and never match the tone or delivery of the rest of the sentence. It’s a huge black spot on the enjoyability of what is a great work.
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Historia
- W Perry Hall
- 12-24-17
Novel Shows How a Murder Could Seem Merciful
In his 2005 National Book Award winning novel, Vollmann alternates story lines between Nazi Germany and the former U.S.S.R. (via Shostakovich) at a frenetic pace--despite its over 800 pages--to demonstrate how these bloody totalitarian bastard regimes forced their citizens to make no-win moral decisions.
Seems Pure Evil gets even more sick pleasure from maiming and splintering souls of innocents than in murdering them.
A need-to-read novel to remind us what history and time have somewhat obscured.
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- Bryan
- 10-31-14
I wasn't smart enough
What would have made Europe Central better?
This book would be better had I taken a 20th century Russian History class with an emphasis on person involved in the Russian Revolution and a minor in Music and Classical Literature.
Any additional comments?
Why do buy and read literature that wins the National Book Award? The subject matter is inaccessible, the prose is incomprehensible, and I wallow in the regret that I am not smart enough for such offerings. Woe is me.
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Historia
- Chip Auger
- 05-13-17
My First and Last Vollman Book
Would you try another book from William T. Vollmann and/or Ralph Cosham?
I could not finish this book. It may be an unfortunate happenstance that this was the first William Vollman book that I’ve attempted to read. It is so poorly written and uniquely uninteresting that I will never attempt another of his works.
Recommendation: NO
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