
Decline and Fall
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Narrated by:
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Stefan Rudnicki
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By:
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Evelyn Waugh
About this listen
“What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!”
Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, is the daring and hilarious tale of Paul Pennyfeather, a theology student expelled from Oxford and sent to teach at a private boys’ school in Wales. Previously a modest young man, Paul finds himself a bit out of place amongst the teachers of Llanabba, who are all misfits, fools, and derelicts themselves: Prendy (the anxious) and Captain Grimes (the drunk), just to name two. There are not only failed men and rowdy boys in this Welsh town to occupy his time, however; Margot Beste-Chetwynde, the mother of one of his students, quickly becomes the object of Paul’s affections. But Margot may not be all she appears to, and Paul’s world is turned upside down all over again.
With a title inspired both by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, Waugh’s Decline and Fall is a brilliant farce and a biting satire of English morals and school life of the 1920s and, by extension, of the experience of generations of so many students and educators since.
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Vile Bodies
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- Narrated by: Robert E Hardy
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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By: Evelyn Waugh
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- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
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Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By G. P. B. on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Scoop
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- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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-
-
Well Written & Funny but Lacking
- By Michael on 07-19-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
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- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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-
-
Extraordinary
- By Vieux Carré Blonde on 12-12-12
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Black Mischief
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.
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-
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- By John on 10-01-16
By: Evelyn Waugh