-
Dogs and Monsters
- Stories
- Narrated by: Christina Cole, Rachel Bavidge, Robert Bathurst, Steve John Shepherd
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pre-order for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
From the “terrifyingly talented” (London Times) author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG-IN THE NIGHT-TIME and THE PORPOISE, eight mesmerizingly imaginative, deeply-humane stories that use Greek myths and contemporary dystopian narratives to examine mortality, moral choices and the many variants of love.
Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew. The dawn goddess Eos asked asks Zeus to give her lover Tithonus eternal life, but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In “The Quiet Limit of the World” Haddon imagines Tithonus’ life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In “The Mother’s Story,” Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king’s wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In “D.O.G.Z.” the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior.
Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes–genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism–to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon’s tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon’s supple prose showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic.
Critic reviews
“Timeless spins on classic Greek myths. . . The author seems to be toying with the essence of storytelling, the way that it has persevered and sustained itself through the ages . . . The times may change but the stories remain the same in this ambitious, eclectic collection.”
– Kirkus
"A potent collection of stories about human foibles and desires...This is divine."
– Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
“A marvel of a collection - suffused with curiosity, humanity and mystery, bold in its scope and virtuoso in its telling. Mark Haddon makes stories matter.”
– Kaliane Bradley, NY Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A beautiful portrait of sudden illness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-09-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
The Porpoise
- A Novel
- By: Mark Haddon
- Narrated by: Tim McInnerny
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a bravura feat of storytelling, Mark Haddon calls upon narratives ancient and modern to tell the story of Angelica, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship with her father. When a young man named Darius discovers their secret, he is forced to escape on a boat bound for the Mediterranean. To his surprise, he finds himself travelling backward over 2,000 years to a world of pirates and shipwrecks, of plagues and miracles and angry gods.
-
-
Smart and complex
- By martini on 08-04-19
By: Mark Haddon
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the listener. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.
-
-
The author should never narrate her own work
- By Cathy J Lerner on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
- A Novel
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his fans will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Brilliant!
- By Dominique on 09-08-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
The Night We Lost Him
- By: Laura Dave
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Liame Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar—notably, a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast where he fell to his death.
By: Laura Dave
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A beautiful portrait of sudden illness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-09-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
The Porpoise
- A Novel
- By: Mark Haddon
- Narrated by: Tim McInnerny
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a bravura feat of storytelling, Mark Haddon calls upon narratives ancient and modern to tell the story of Angelica, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship with her father. When a young man named Darius discovers their secret, he is forced to escape on a boat bound for the Mediterranean. To his surprise, he finds himself travelling backward over 2,000 years to a world of pirates and shipwrecks, of plagues and miracles and angry gods.
-
-
Smart and complex
- By martini on 08-04-19
By: Mark Haddon
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the listener. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.
-
-
The author should never narrate her own work
- By Cathy J Lerner on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
- A Novel
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his fans will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Brilliant!
- By Dominique on 09-08-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
The Night We Lost Him
- By: Laura Dave
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Liame Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar—notably, a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast where he fell to his death.
By: Laura Dave