
Doctor Zhivago
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Narrated by:
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John Lee
About this listen
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times.
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Featured Article: Essential Russian Authors to Know in Audio
Don’t be daunted by the towering reputations of Russia’s literary giants. Listening is the perfect way to appreciate the masters. Russia is a sprawling country with a rich and complex history, which is reflected in its literature. Whether you’re keen on brushing up on classic Russian literature or you want to find a new author to explore, we’ve rounded up 13 of the best Russian authors, classic and contemporary, whose work you should know.
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- By: Peter Finn, Petra Couvée
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In May of 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to the Russian countryside to visit the country's most beloved poet, Boris Pasternak. He left concealing the original manuscript of Pasternak's much anticipated first novel, entrusted to him with these words from the author: "This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world." Pasternak knew his novel would never be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an assault on the 1917 Revolution, so he allowed it to be published in translation all over the world.
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Read this to understand Doctor Zhivago and Russia
- By KathrynVB on 10-16-14
By: Peter Finn, and others
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Dead Souls
- By: Nikolai Gogol, Constance Garnett - translator
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Gogol's great Russian classic is the Pickwick Papers of Russian literature. It takes a sharp but humorous look at life in all its strata but especially the devious complexities in Russia, with its landowners and serfs. We are introduced to Chichikov, a businessman who, in order to trick the tax authorities, buys up dead 'souls', or serfs, whose names still appear on the government census. Despite being a dealer in phantom crimes and paper ghosts, he is the most beguiling of Gogol's characters.
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Hilarious and well done, but massive sections of the manuscript are missing?
- By C. E. Johnson on 11-19-18
By: Nikolai Gogol, and others
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The Master and Margarita
- By: Mikhail Bulgakov
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn't all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.
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Satisfying Satanic Satire
- By Jacob on 12-06-11
By: Mikhail Bulgakov
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The Trial
- Penguin Classics
- By: Franz Kafka, Idris Parry
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable.
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Could not get into story
- By Norm Hagen on 06-05-25
By: Franz Kafka, and others
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Doctor Faustus
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul—and the ability to love his fellow man.
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Literary self flagellation
- By Lipton101 on 02-13-25
By: Thomas Mann
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The American
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Self-made American millionaire Christopher Newman arrives in Paris brimming with hope and optimism, excited to experience the culture and, hopefully, find the perfect woman to become his wife. After a chance encounter with American expatriate friends, his attention is drawn to Madame de Cintré, 25-year-old widowed daughter of the late Marquis de Bellegarde. Having fallen on hard times, the centuries-old aristocratic family permits Newman's courtship to proceed; however, they later persuade the widow to break off her engagement to the nouveau-riche businessman.
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excellent reading
- By Andorboth on 12-03-22
By: Henry James
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Sentimental Education
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Upon arriving home in Normandy, Frederick catches his first glimpse of Marie Arnoux, a mysterious and beautiful woman who leaves a lasting impression on him. Eventually they make each other's acquaintance and Marie becomes a symbol of unattainable perfection for Frederick, whose unrequited infatuation leaves him bouncing from one passion to another, falling in and out of love, money and society.
By: Gustave Flaubert
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The Reivers
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque story that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi. Eleven-year-old Lucas Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey.
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4 days in the life of an eleven year old
- By ruth a anderson on 11-17-09
By: William Faulkner
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Sons and Lovers
- By: D. H. Lawrence
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence's first major novel, was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives.
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Momma's Boy (The Dangers of Overbearing Parenting)
- By W Perry Hall on 02-01-14
By: D. H. Lawrence
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Das Boot
- By: Lothar-Günther Buchheim
- Narrated by: Dietmar Bär
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Abridged
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Die unglaubliche Geschichte des U-Bootes U96 und seiner den Elementen und dem Irrsinn des Krieges ausgelieferten Besatzung...
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Mitreißend
- By Jordan Rudolf on 09-11-23
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War and Peace
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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War and Peace is one of the greatest monuments in world literature. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, it examines the relationship between the individual and the relentless march of history. Here are the universal themes of love and hate, ambition and despair, youth and age, expressed with a swirling vitality which makes the story as accessible today as it was when it was first published in 1869.
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ABRIDGED VERSION
- By Danielle on 06-10-19
By: Leo Tolstoy
A Satisfying Performance
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John Lee makes this come alive, a classic
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Well, it’s all there
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.This new translation touches the fiber of humanity.
THE RUSSIAN novel and history lesson for the world
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I think the movie is better
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Exceptional a masterpiece
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I tried again, then watched the movie
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Also, if you love the film, be for a lot of talk of politics, war and Russian history. The romance only really starts in the last 6 hrs. Still worth the listen, just be prepared. The film, as many films of Russian novels do, boils down to the characters and their journey; Giving just the basic ideas of the background history/politics/lifestyle/agriculture etc. I’ll be watching the film yet again now that I’ve finished the book, perhaps with a deeper appreciation for the atmosphere.
Why a British reader?
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Would you consider the audio edition of Doctor Zhivago to be better than the print version?
It was outstanding!What did you like best about this story?
I was warned that it would be difficult to follow the characters, but it was not difficult at all.What about John Lee’s performance did you like?
Everything!If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
the story of life.WoW!
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The Lara character is shown for maybe half of the book, not all the way through as I had somehow expected. She is a woman who brings a tumultuous train of story elements along with her, and Zhivago is drawn to her as though by a law of nature. And in the end, he finds that he has to separate from her by an equally strict set of rules, even though they both love one another deeply. The sections where they are together are not sexy as much as they depict their bond as one with a certain rightness, even if illicit, dangerous, and ultimately doomed. After they are apart, it is as though Zhivago knows already that they will never meet again in life, so he cannot even strive to bring about a reunion. He's a different person, with a damaged circulatory system in the same way his emotional center itself is damaged. In the epilogue we see how life continues without him, during another war which is only lightly alluded to.
The audio narration was good, not too flashy or overusing different voices for all of the characters, only a slight indication of gender or social class, and in one class a comical foreign accent. He lets the horrific scenes and the rapturous lyric scenes speak for themselves.
This prize-winning work receives a good treatment
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