Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Geoff Dyer
About this listen
Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman, a jaded and dissolute journalist, whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled party-going is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets the spellbinding Laura, he is rejuvenated, ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly, but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly?
Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days, he ends up staying for months, and suddenly finds a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story?
An irrepressible and wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi is dead-on in its evocation of place, longing, and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment.
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Transmission, Hari Kunzru's new novel of love and lunacy, immigration and immunity, introduces a daydreaming Indian computer geek whose luxurious fantasies about life in America are shaken when he accepts a California job offer.
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Thoroughly Enjoyable
- By Don on 07-11-04
By: Hari Kunzru
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After the Party
- By: Lisa Jewell
- Narrated by: Helen Duff
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this irresistible novel from the author of Then She Was Gone, Jem and Ralph discover the power of starting over after 11 years together have left them drifting apart.
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Bitter, Anti-Christian Stereotyping Detracts.
- By Gretchen on 11-23-18
By: Lisa Jewell
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Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spirit of Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Tom Perrotta’s Mrs. Fletcher, an explosive and thought-provoking novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man 20 years her senior. Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints - victim, perpetrator, and witness - Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
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One of the greatest stories of all time!
- By Valarie on 06-17-20
By: Sofka Zinovieff
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Smoke and Whispers
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as Private Detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.
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What a disappointment
- By jaf on 08-23-24
By: Mick Herron
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The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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Mystery with humor and insight
- By Ida Hagman on 10-02-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Brightest Star in the Sky
- A Novel
- By: Marian Keyes
- Narrated by: Caitriona Keyes
- Length: 17 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The Brightest Star in the Sky follows seven neighbors whose lives become entangled when a sassy and prescient spirit pays a visit to their Dublin townhouse with the intent of changing at least one of their lives. But what will this metamorphosis be and who will the sprite choose?
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Terrible sound quality, worse narration
- By Jan on 02-23-10
By: Marian Keyes
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Leaving the Atocha Station
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Ben Lerner
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's 'research' becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections?
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Insightful, beautiful
- By Rochelle on 12-09-14
By: Ben Lerner
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Beautiful Animals
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.
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please offer more of this author's books
- By S. Liskey on 07-20-17
By: Lawrence Osborne
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Insomniac City
- New York, Oliver, and Me
- By: Bill Hayes
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at 48 years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.
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Touching and Intimate Portrait
- By Amazon Customer on 01-18-19
By: Bill Hayes
What listeners say about Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James Barszcz
- 05-06-13
Clever writer, suitable narrator, bad audio
This recording annoyed me. Especially while listening to the first half, I often couldn't make out consonants at the beginning and end of words. It took a lot of attention to fill them in retrospectively, when I understood the sentence, which made it difficult to listen while driving. I was straining to make out the words--was that "whole," "home," "hone"? "Bone," "phone," "moan"? This seemed more perverse given the play on consonants in the title, with its allusion to Mann's "Death in Venice." I can think of a few causes of the muffling. First, Mr. Vance, who is an accomplished narrator of many other books that I've enjoyed, sounds tired, and maybe lacking energy to articulate fully. Maybe it was the equipment that couldn't pick up changes in volume, or had too thick a windscreen fitted to it. Or, most annoyingly, it sometime seemed that the garbling was being done on purpose, as if someone warned Vance not to pop his P's and so he was holding back on sounding any consonants. Whatever. It bugged me.
That said, the book is smart and funny, like other Dyer books I have read. Dyer has a way of teasing out absurdities in modern cultural events (like the Venice Bienniele (sp?)) and in his own modern take on culture. Part 1 describes a brief romance of British journalist "Jeff" with an American art-gallery operative. In Part 2, Jeff goes to Varanasi, a city on the Ganges where Hindu funeral rites are performed. At heart, Dyer himself is a journalist or memoirist or travel writer, or some combination of all three, not unlike his hero D.H. Lawrence in some of his books, and the plotting of each part seems adventitious and casual. He wants to write about Venice and India more than about characters. I was not pleased by the descriptions of sexual encounters in Part 1, but maybe that's me. I've always wanted to visit India, but after imagining the squalor as described in Part 2 of the story, I'm not so sure.
I do like Dyer, and I like Vance's work elsewhere. They're neither at their best here.
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- Mari
- 03-12-15
A Great Contemporary Novel
I am so surprised at some of these reviews. This is a real thought piece, not something to be taken at face value. To the reviewer who "hated Jeff in Venice", you were supposed to hate him. Here the Biennale represents the height of contemporary decadence. It is one long string of vacuous conversations, holding together a narrative of sex and drugs that make up the contemporary art scene. It's easy to make fun of contemporary art. Dyer takes it one step further and has written a scathing critique of the entire art world. Anyone picking this up and hoping for Thomas Mann will be disappointed. This is Tom Wolf, unleashed on the new millennium.
The book changes gears rapidly and beautifully when we get to Varanasi. The western comparisons to Venice are there, as we witness a transformation of the main character. He enters onto a zen journey into the "true and universal self". After all, isn't that what Atman means?
This is a great contemporary novel. One worth either listening to, or reading, carefully.
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Overall
- Frank
- 01-28-11
Hate Jeff in Venice, Love Death in Varanasi
I've been a Geoff Dyer fan for years and I hit a wall of disappointment listening to "Jeff in Venice". I couldn't figure out why the text even existed. Who could care about the sex life and gorged ego of the lead character? There is little reason to read this first half of the book although I forced myself to finish it.
"Death in Varanasi" is a fresh start with the same, or similar, character. Only one problem with "Varanasi." The narrator doesn't know how to pronounce the name of the city. It drove me wacky listening to him mispronounce it over and over again. Finally, I learned to ignore his pronunciation and fell deeply into the story. This is a great tale of "neurotic enlightenment." I started listening to "Venice" again after finishing "Varanasi," but it still wasn't worth the time. I listened "Varanasi" again and fell into it with a new level of comprehension. This is a great short novel. Five stars for "Death in Varanasi" minus one star for pronunciation. No stars for "Jeff in Venice." Simply ignore it.
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Overall
- Kathy
- 08-04-10
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Nothing but a boring travel log. No story line what so ever. I can't believe an editor approved this for publication. Total waste of time. I never could figure out what the author was trying to convey. It was nothing but ramblings about two different cities. The author must have been on drugs when he wrote this.
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