Bel-Ami
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Narrated by:
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Thomas Solivérès
About this listen
La Belle Époque. Georges Duroy se retrouve à Paris sans argent en quête d'ascension sociale. Un soir, il rencontre Forestier, un ancien camarade de régiment qui va lui proposer un poste de journaliste à la Vie Française. Il fait alors la connaissance de Clotilde de Marelle, la cousine de Madeleine Forestier, qui va lui faire découvrir une éducation sentimentale très libre. Sa beauté et son charme lui ouvrent le cœur des autres femmes qu'il côtoie et peu à peu il occupe des postes plus importants au journal. Tout le monde adopte le surnom "Bel Ami" donné par Laurine, la fille de Clotilde.
Lu par Thomas Solivéres. Acteur et comédien, il se fait connaître à l'écran dans le film Intouchables et sur scène dans Harold et Maude où il joue aux côtés de Line Renaud. Sa carrière se poursuit à la télévision où il est le personnage récurrent de plusieurs formats courts ( Scènes de ménage, VDM la série...), au théâtre (dans des pièces classiques et contemporaines) et enfin au cinéma où il a notamment revêtu l'habit de groom de Spirou dans Les Aventures de Spirou et Fantasio (2018) ou encore le nez de Cyrano dans Edmond (2019).
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Story
In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
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One of my favorite authors
- By Adeliese Baumann on 03-21-18
By: Stefan Zweig
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Oblomov
- By: Ivan Goncharov
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need.
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funny and smart
- By Bennett Weiss on 07-29-20
By: Ivan Goncharov
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Now, Voyager
- Femmes Fatales
- By: Olive Higgins Prouty
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Boston blueblood Charlotte Vale has led an unhappy, sheltered life. Lonely, dowdy, repressed, and pushing 40, Charlotte finds salvation at a sanitarium, where she undergoes an emotional and physical transformation. After her extreme makeover, the new Charlotte tests her mettle by embarking on a cruise and finds herself in a torrid love affair with a married man which ends at the conclusion of the voyage. But only then can the real journey begin, as Charlotte is forced to navigate a new life for herself.
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The Inspiration for The Movie Classic
- By Susie on 12-17-12
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The Custom of the Country
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Grace Conlin
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of Edith Wharton's most acclaimed works, The Custom of the Country is a blistering indictment of materialism, power, and misplaced values. Its heroine, Undine Spragg, is one of the most ruthless characters in all of literature, as selfishly unscrupulous as she is fiercely beautiful. As she climbs the class ladder through a series of marriages and affairs, she shows little concern for who she has to step on.
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Narrator kills the book
- By Mississippi Malka on 05-24-10
By: Edith Wharton
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The Glimpses of the Moon
- By: Edith Wharton
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas.
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Couldn't stop listening
- By Michael Breed on 12-09-09
By: Edith Wharton
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Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance
- By: Gyles Brandreth
- Narrated by: Bill Wallis
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright, and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime - but it is Wilde's unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation....
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needs glue
- By connie on 11-13-11
By: Gyles Brandreth
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 38 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.
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Beautiful story, amazing narration
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 08-02-08
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Nikolay Trifilov
- Length: 43 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Znamenityj roman vvodit nas v bogatyj, raznoobraznyj, udivitel'no uyutnyj i privlekatel'nyj mir russkoj dvoryanskoj zhizni Moskvy i Peterburga. Tolstoj vystupaet zdes' pevcom povsednevnoj zhizni, kotoruyu on poehtiziruet i v kotoroj vidit filosofskuyu glubinu, primiryayushchuyu stol' razitel'nye protivopolozhnosti, kak tragicheskaya nezakonnaya svyaz' Anny Kareninoj s Vronskim i schastlivaya semejnaya zhizn' Kiti s Cherbackoj i Levina.
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Fantastic narration!
- By Anastasia Lattanand on 03-10-16
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Devils
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 28 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Exiled to four years in Siberia, but hailed by the end of his life as a saint, prophet, and genius, Fyodor Dostoevsky holds an exalted place among the best of the great Russian authors. One of Dostoevsky’s five major novels, Devils follows the travails of a small provincial town beset by a band of modish radicals - and in so doing presents a devastating depiction of life and politics in late 19th-century Imperial Russia.
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Excellent translation and narration
- By L. Kerr on 09-06-13
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The Idiot
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 27 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin possesses a childlike innocence and trusting nature that leave him vulnerable to abuse by those around him. Returning to St. Petersburg to collect an inheritance, Myshkin realizes he is a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, manipulation and power.
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Avoid Constance Garnett
- By Anthony on 04-09-17
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Of Human Bondage
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 28 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Of Human Bondage is one of the greatest novels of modern times, and it is certainly Maugham's greatest achievement. It was published in 1914, when Maugham was at the height of his creative powers. The story concerns Philip Carey, afflicted at birth with a club foot, and his passionate search for truth in a cruel world. We follow his growth to manhood, his educational progress, his first loves, and the wrenching tragedies and disappointments that life has in store for him. In some of the finest prose of the 20th century, Maugham has presented us with the timeless story of one man's search for the meaning of life.
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Greatly Unsettling
- By Michael on 10-04-14
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
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Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
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Laughter in the Dark
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.
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Death is often the point of life's joke
- By Darwin8u on 05-19-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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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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Performance
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Story
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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A Box of Chocolates
- By Darlene on 02-08-05
By: Anton Chekhov
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The Count of Monte Cristo
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 52 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason, trumped up by jealous rivals. Incarcerated for many lonely years in the isolated and terrifying Chateau d'If near Marseille, he meticulously plans his brilliant escape and extraordinary revenge.
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This is the one to spend 50 hours listening to!
- By james on 03-05-13
By: Alexandre Dumas