Exemplary Novels
Translated by Edith Grossman
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Narrated by:
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Luis Moreno
About this listen
Edith Grossman, celebrated for her brilliant translation of Don Quixote, offers a dazzling new version of another Cervantes classic, on the 400th anniversary of his death. The 12 novellas gathered together in Exemplary Novels reveal the extraordinary breadth of Cervantes' imagination: his nearly limitless ability to create characters, invent plots, and entertain listeners across continents and centuries. Edith Grossman's eagerly awaited translation brings this timeless classic to English-language listeners in an edition that will delight those already familiar with Cervantes' work as well as those about to be enchanted for the first time. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria's illuminating introduction to the volume serves as both an appreciation of Cervantes's brilliance and a critical guide to the novellas and their significance. Cervantes published his book in Spain in 1613. The assemblage of unique characters (eloquent witches, talking dogs, Gypsy orphans, and an array of others), the twisting plots, and the moral heart at the core of each tale proved irresistible to his enthusiastic audience. Then as now, Cervantes' listeners find pure entertainment in his works, but also a subtle artistry that invites deeper investigation.
©2016 Edith Grossman, 2016 By Yale University (introduction) (P)2016 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Related to this topic
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By: Charles Lamb, and others
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Performance
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sixteenth-century Spanish gentleman Don Quixote, fed by his own delusional fantasies, takes to the road in search of chivalrous adventures. But his quest leads to more trouble than triumph. At once humorous, romantic, and sad, Don Quixote is a literary landmark. This fresh edition, by award-winning translator Edith Grossman, brings the tale to life as never before.
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By: Edith Grossman - translator, and others
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- By: Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Quixotic is a word that the dictionary defines as "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary...." and that is a fitting definition, indeed, for this charming retelling of Don Quixote, the 17t- century Spanish classic by Miguel de Cervantes, now updated for the modern listener. The gallant and fragile Quixote will touch listeners, as will his faithful squire Sancho Panza and the tragically beautiful heroine of the gentle Don’s chivalries, the fair Dulcinea.
-
-
Great way in
- By pxriver on 07-12-18
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- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
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Story
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- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Introduce your children to the magic of Shakespeare with these 20 favorite tales. Although simplified, these lively stories don't underestimate young readers; they keep the complexity, twists of plot, and turns of fate found in the originals.
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NOT unabridged
- By Erica on 11-06-07
By: Charles Lamb, and others
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Tales from Shakespeare
- By: Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb is a retelling of 20 of Shakespeare’s most beloved stories. Within the pages of this book, the 19th-century authors bring to life the Shakespearean plots and characters of another age in an easy-to-understand prose of a newer generation.
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A classic
- By Jacque Eddy on 10-07-19
By: Charles Lamb, and others
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Waverley
- By: Sir Walter Scott
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is an enthralling tale of love, war and divided loyalties. Taking place during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the novel tells the story of proud English officer Edward Waverley. After being posted to Dundee, Edward eventually befriends chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor and falls in love with his beautiful sister Flora. He then renounces his former loyalties in order actively to support Scotland in open rebellion against the Union with England. The book depicts stunning, romantic panoramas of the Highlands.
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Loved it
- By Tad Davis on 04-12-18
By: Sir Walter Scott
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The Three Musketeers (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Alexandre Dumas, William Robson - translator
- Narrated by: Guy Mott
- Length: 27 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Young nobleman d’Artagnan has arrived in Paris intent on joining the guardians of King Louis XIII. He befriends the regiment’s most formidable musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and together they unite in their commitment to uphold justice. Soon, a royal indiscretion thrusts them into an audacious escapade of courtly intrigue, thwarted romance, and daring rescue. But it’s the Machiavellian schemes of a powerful enemy and the wicked seductions of an ingenious female spy that will be their greatest challenges.
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terrible narrator. every comma is a 3 second pause
- By Anonymous User on 09-21-21
By: Alexandre Dumas, and others
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Don Quixote
- By: Miguel de Cervantes, Gerald J. Davis - translator
- Narrated by: John Hanks
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a hidalgo who reads so many chivalric novels that he decides to set out to revive chivalry, under the name Don Quixote. This is the story that a Nobel Prize Committee survey of one hundred of the world's best writers named "the greatest book of all time."
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A wonderful, magical listen
- By K on 12-01-13
By: Miguel de Cervantes, and others
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El conde de Montecristo [The Count of Monte Cristo]
- By: Alejandro Dumas
- Narrated by: Joan M Martinez
- Length: 46 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Ésta es sin duda, la novela de aventuras más famosa de la historia de la literatura. El joven Edmundo Dantés llega al puerto de Marsella, feliz por poder ver a Mercedes, de la que está enamorado. Pero otros pretendientes de Mercedes, van a hacerle la vida imposible, consiguiendo que el mismo día de la boda sea detenido, acusado de traición al rey y enviado directamente a la terrible prisión del castillo de If.
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Qué bonita historia y que gran narración.
- By Luis Enrique Cuevas Hernández on 02-14-21
By: Alejandro Dumas
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The Arabian Nights (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Andrew Lang
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The vengeful King Schahriar agrees to stave off the execution of Queen Scheherazade until she finishes a particularly compelling story. Her plan? Bleed one tale into another. Through fanciful histories, romances, tragedies, comedies, poems, riddles, and songs, Scheherazade prolongs her life by holding the king’s rapt attention. With origins in Persian and Eastern Indian folklore, the stories of The Arabian Nights have been reworked, reshaped, revised, collected, and supplemented throughout the centuries by various authors and scholars.
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Very edited version
- By HDVE on 11-13-18
By: Andrew Lang
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Candide (AudioGO Edition)
- By: Voltaire
- Narrated by: Jack Davenport
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When first published in 1759, Candide became an instant best seller and is now regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s preoccupations with evil and with various kinds of human folly and intolerance found a perfect vehicle in this philosophical tale. A master storyteller, he combined often wildly entertaining action with profoundly serious sense, parodying the traditional chivalric and oriental tales with which his public was more familiar.
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Guaranteed to keep you smiling if not LOL
- By Robert on 08-09-12
By: Voltaire
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The Decameron
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Gunnar Cauthery, Alison Pettitt, and others
- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
- By John on 11-15-17
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Joseph Andrews
- The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams
- By: Henry Fielding
- Narrated by: Rufus Sewell
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Riotous, sexy and groundbreaking, Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, published in 1742, was one of the first English novels. Fielding was melding and parodying the two major forces battling for control of the fiction market at the time - the mock heroic, neoclassical tradition as practiced by Pope and Swift and the popular and populist fiction of the new novelists such as Defoe and Richardson.
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A perfect reader for Henry Fielding
- By TiffanyD on 07-27-17
By: Henry Fielding
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Joseph Andrews
- By: Henry Fielding
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In one of the first novels in the English language, we follow the picaresque adventures of Joseph Andrews, a virtuous young man who is keen to maintain his innocence despite being coerced by nearly every woman he encounters.
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Action and Ideas
- By John on 01-27-20
By: Henry Fielding
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The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
- By: James Hogg
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny, Nick McArdle
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A psychological thriller before its time, James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824, takes us back to the world of 18th-century Scotland, into a mind haunted by religious obsession, and driven to commit murder. The events are told from several different viewpoints, so that truth and reality appear to dissolve in this disturbing story of the dark legacy of Calvinist doctrine, and how it led one man to madness.
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A gripping story
- By fred greene on 04-19-18
By: James Hogg
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Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
- By: Samuel Richardson
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett, Full Cast
- Length: 21 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, published in 1740, tells the story of a young woman's resistance to the desires of her predatory master. Pamela is determined to protect her virginity and remain a paragon of virtue; however, the heroine's moral principles only strengthen the resolve of Mr. B and Pamela soon finds herself imprisoned against her will. The young woman's affection for her captor gradually grows and she becomes aware of a love that combines eros and agape.
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The one, the only, Pamela!
- By Eve Howard on 09-07-17
What listeners say about Exemplary Novels
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mountain K9iner
- 04-23-19
Another side of Cervantes
Readers familiar with Don Quixote will be a bit surprised at this collection of short stories by Cervantes. He was writing these at the same time he was composing Book II of Don Quixote. It is similar in genre to the "The Man who was Recklessly Curious" which is a short story he embedded (and for which he was criticized by his contemporaries) in Book I of the Quixote. Most of us would probably not know of Cervantes were these his only works, but they are well written stories with many twists and turns that are designed to demonstrate the consequences of a virtuous or vicious life. Although they lack the slapstick humor of Quixote, they contain the same deep concern for promoting virtue and depict characters from all walks of life. Reading these stories significantly transformed my reading of Quixote by deepening my understanding of Cervantes.
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5 people found this helpful
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- John
- 08-07-19
Toto, We’re Not in LaMancha Anymore…
When a writer is a recognized giant, and I think their work less than gigantic, I naturally question my judgement. Yes, I enjoyed some of these tales; a few even intrigued me. But all seemed less immediate and engaging than those of Chretien de Troyes, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Spenser, Giambattista Basile or even Cervantes’ own Don Quixote. Maybe it was the shock of finding the scourge of chivalric romances writing romances. Or the academic intro’s insistence on their “high literary quality” created a barrier (I was just trying to enjoy them). Maybe the translation, though so long-awaited, isn’t as good as we think. Whether the fault lay with Cervantes, his translator or our reader, there’s something stiff and halting in the way these stories unfold. Or, again, maybe it’s just me.
Certainly, the historical and cultural context, the details of Cervantes’ biography and the literary insights provided in the introduction (placed at the end of this recording) are helpful. For example, my puzzlement over one tale that seems to end abruptly with no dénouement, was confirmed. The best insight may be the comment that, for all his modern literary “gamesmanship”, for all his playing with “indeterminacy”, (both trendy academic concepts I distrust) Cervantes was not a modern—a bracingly honest antidote to our very modern tendency to value great figures of the past only insofar as they conform to our current cultural agenda.
There is much good stuff here. As the contemporary introduction stresses, though not "moralistic", these tales certainly serve a moral purpose (see the discussion of witchcraft in the colloquy of the dogs, or Cervantes’ own declarations in his preface). In the end, however, I can be no more than lukewarm about them. They drag. The humor is more often leaden than sparkling. Many times I was tempted, like the dog Scipio, to shout, ““Enough! Go on Berganza, your point’s been made!” True, now I’ll be able to say, “Why, yes, I know Cervantes’ Exemplary Novels” when someone asks me. Trouble is, no one will ever ask me.
Our reader does a fine, if somewhat deliberate, job, deciding rightly not to bother about Spanish accents for his characters, yet pronouncing every Spanish word beautifully. Still, a little more animation might have helped.
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6 people found this helpful