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Le Pere Goriot
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
Honoré de Balzac uses his classic style of detail to describe a most controversial setting in his novel Le Pere Goriot. The story takes place in Paris just after the fall of Napoleon in 1819. The story focuses on three characters, Rastignac, a student who wants to try and make it big in the capital, Vautrin, an interesting and funny character who is also quite mysterious, and the main character, Goriot, that carries a heavy burden that only a loving parent would endure.
The story follows the journey of Rastignac, the two daughters of Goriot, and Goriot himself who was once a wealthy businessman. It's a heart wrenching story of a man driven to poverty by the selfless acts and the overwhelming love and devotion that he has for his two daughters, both of whom are very selfish, and do not share the same love for their father.
How far will Goriot go to keep his daughters happy, and will the daughters ever appreciate the great sacrifices this man has made for them?
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The Brothers Karamazov [Naxos AudioBooks Edition]
- By: Constance Garnett - translator, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Narrated by: Constantine Gregory
- Length: 37 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a titanic figure among the world's great authors, and The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as his finest novel. A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.
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A Spiritual and Philosophical Tour-de-Force
- By Rich on 02-27-16
By: Constance Garnett - translator, and others
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The Count of Monte Cristo
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: Philippe Duquenoy
- Length: 45 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Published in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo would become one of the most popular works of literature of its time. In this story, the reader is taken on a wild adventure as they transverse the world of Edmond Dantes, a man that has been wrongfully imprisoned in the gloomy Château d’If. Dantes' time at the château has not been a complete waste. During his imprisonment, he hears of hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. With grim determination, Edmond Dante plans to escape and find the treasure.
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Wonderful story and performance!
- By Hannah on 05-09-20
By: Alexandre Dumas
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The Good Soldier
- By: Ford Madox Ford
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On the face of it Captain Edward Ashburnham's life was unimpeachable. But behind the mask where passion seethes, the captain's "good" life was rotting away.
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Treachery in the Troops
- By Mel on 01-08-15
By: Ford Madox Ford
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Oblomov
- By: Ivan Goncharov
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A member of the landed gentry, with a seemingly guaranteed income from his estate in the country, Oblomov lives in Petersburg, uninterested in the business that provides his living and barely aware that the revenue is diminishing. Not that he leads a dissolute life of extravagance, balls and entertainment. Instead he is a dreamer, a sybarite, content above all to spend most of the day supine, in bed. The novel opens with Oblomov thus ensconced, attended only by his dirty, grumbling, indolent servant Zahar, who has looked after him since childhood, catering to his every need.
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funny and smart
- By Bennett Weiss on 07-29-20
By: Ivan Goncharov
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 38 hrs
- Unabridged
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Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.
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Beautiful story, amazing narration
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 08-02-08
By: Leo Tolstoy
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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
- By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
- Narrated by: Edoardo Camponeschi
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was the greatest writer ever to come from Brazil and one of the masters of nineteenth-century fiction. Susan Sontag calls him "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America", surpassing even Borges. Harold Bloom says that Machado is "the supreme black literary artist to date". And Allen Ginsburg calls him "another Kafka". And The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is his masterpiece, a dazzling, tragic, and profound novel that belongs next to the greatest works of his contemporaries Melville and Dostoevsky.
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A hidden masterpiece
- By C. Park on 08-09-18
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Mary Barton
- A Tale of Manchester Life
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When her father assassinates Henry Carson, his employer's son and Mary's admirer, suspicion falls on Mary's second admirer, Jem, a fellow worker. Mary has to prove her lover's innocence without incriminating her own father.
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Mrs. Gaskell was so far ahead of her time
- By Pat on 08-20-13
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Jude The Obscure
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of a young country workman obsessed by his ambition to become an Oxford student, interwoven with his fraught relationships with two women.
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Staggering
- By Tad Davis on 02-16-10
By: Thomas Hardy
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 39 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "one of the greatest love stories in world literature." Set in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation on passionate love and disastrous infidelity. Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army officer, the elegant Count Vronsky.
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Not good dramatization but an ok reading
- By Bookoholics Anon on 05-07-11
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Jane Eyre
- By: Charlotte Brontë
- Narrated by: Thandiwe Newton
- Length: 19 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.
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Perfect!!
- By Amazon Customer on 04-21-16
By: Charlotte Brontë
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Impoverished young aristocrat Eugene de Rastignac is determined to climb the social ladder and impress himself on Parisian high society. While staying at the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris's rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, he encounters Jean-Joachim Goriot, a retired vermicelli maker who has spent his entire fortune supporting his two daughters. The boarders strike up a friendship and Goriot learns of Rastignac's feelings for his daughter Delphine. He begins to see Rastignac as the ideal son-in-law, and the perfect substitute for Delphine's domineering husband. But Rastignac has other opportunities too....
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Astounding performance
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Le Pere Goriot
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At the shabby boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, petty Madame Vauquer and her tenants wonder at the plight of the aging resident Goriot. Once a well-heeled merchant, Goriot was, at first, afforded special treatment from the Madame. But now something is clearly amiss in his financial affairs, and his increasingly tawdry appearance makes him a subject of ridicule in the household.
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balzac rocks
- By beatrice on 03-12-10
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Le père Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Éric Herson-Macarel
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Voici donc l'histoire de ce père Goriot, vermicellien ayant fait fortune et qui, tel l'Albatros de Baudelaire, se déchirera les entrailles pour élever ses enfants. Mais, malgré le titre du roman, en est-ce vraiment le héros où est-ce Eugène de Rastignac, jeune homme issu d'une noble mais pauvre famille, venu faire des études de droit à Paris et qui va essayer par tous les moyens de se hisser dans l'échelle sociale parisienne ?
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Roman magnifique et encore si vrai aujourd’hui
- By SANDRINE on 06-09-24
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Eugénie Grandet
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Jonathan Fried
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Hailed as the father of the naturalist novel, French author and playwright Honoré de Balzac left a legacy of treasured literary works that include Père Goriot and Cousin Bette. The daughter of a wealthy but miserly man, Eugénie Grandet falls in love with her penniless cousin, Charles. The two plan to marry, but at the behest of her father, Charles must first go overseas to make his fortune. Returning years later, Charles calls off the engagement, leaving Eugénie heartbroken and vengeful.
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Unpleasant people
- By Tad Davis on 06-08-14
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Le père Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Bernard
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Étudiant désargenté, Eugène de Rastignac est monté à Paris pour y faire son droit et y acquérir gloire et pouvoir. Il loge dans une pension miteuse et rencontre le père Goriot. Ancien négociant, il s'est ruiné pour ses filles qui, après leur mariage, ne lui témoignent qu'indifférence et mépris. Rastignac est alors confronté aux calculs sordides et à la noirceur du coeur humain. Il tire de cette expérience un sentiment de fatalité mais aussi une formidable volonté de conquête.
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Honoré de Balzac: Pere Goriot, The Black Sheep & More
- Four BBC Radio Full-Cast Dramatisations
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry, Douglas Hodge, David Ross, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
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This brilliant collection of France’s foremost nineteenth-century novelist and playwright delivers four of his most fascinating works - stories of love, rivalry, horror and adventure - all brought to life by a stellar cast included Stephen Fry and Alex Kingston. A huge influence on many of the most famous writers from Proust to Kerouac to Dickens, Balzac delivers beautifully observed and complex characters with an unsurpassed attention to the details of society at the time, making him an exemplary of realism in European literature.
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Impoverished young aristocrat Eugene de Rastignac is determined to climb the social ladder and impress himself on Parisian high society. While staying at the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris's rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, he encounters Jean-Joachim Goriot, a retired vermicelli maker who has spent his entire fortune supporting his two daughters. The boarders strike up a friendship and Goriot learns of Rastignac's feelings for his daughter Delphine. He begins to see Rastignac as the ideal son-in-law, and the perfect substitute for Delphine's domineering husband. But Rastignac has other opportunities too....
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Astounding performance
- By Laurence Grey on 04-05-21
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Le Pere Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
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Overall
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At the shabby boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, petty Madame Vauquer and her tenants wonder at the plight of the aging resident Goriot. Once a well-heeled merchant, Goriot was, at first, afforded special treatment from the Madame. But now something is clearly amiss in his financial affairs, and his increasingly tawdry appearance makes him a subject of ridicule in the household.
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balzac rocks
- By beatrice on 03-12-10
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Le père Goriot
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- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
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Voici donc l'histoire de ce père Goriot, vermicellien ayant fait fortune et qui, tel l'Albatros de Baudelaire, se déchirera les entrailles pour élever ses enfants. Mais, malgré le titre du roman, en est-ce vraiment le héros où est-ce Eugène de Rastignac, jeune homme issu d'une noble mais pauvre famille, venu faire des études de droit à Paris et qui va essayer par tous les moyens de se hisser dans l'échelle sociale parisienne ?
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Roman magnifique et encore si vrai aujourd’hui
- By SANDRINE on 06-09-24
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Eugénie Grandet
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Jonathan Fried
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Hailed as the father of the naturalist novel, French author and playwright Honoré de Balzac left a legacy of treasured literary works that include Père Goriot and Cousin Bette. The daughter of a wealthy but miserly man, Eugénie Grandet falls in love with her penniless cousin, Charles. The two plan to marry, but at the behest of her father, Charles must first go overseas to make his fortune. Returning years later, Charles calls off the engagement, leaving Eugénie heartbroken and vengeful.
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Unpleasant people
- By Tad Davis on 06-08-14
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Le père Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
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Overall
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Story
Étudiant désargenté, Eugène de Rastignac est monté à Paris pour y faire son droit et y acquérir gloire et pouvoir. Il loge dans une pension miteuse et rencontre le père Goriot. Ancien négociant, il s'est ruiné pour ses filles qui, après leur mariage, ne lui témoignent qu'indifférence et mépris. Rastignac est alors confronté aux calculs sordides et à la noirceur du coeur humain. Il tire de cette expérience un sentiment de fatalité mais aussi une formidable volonté de conquête.
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Honoré de Balzac: Pere Goriot, The Black Sheep & More
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Overall
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This brilliant collection of France’s foremost nineteenth-century novelist and playwright delivers four of his most fascinating works - stories of love, rivalry, horror and adventure - all brought to life by a stellar cast included Stephen Fry and Alex Kingston. A huge influence on many of the most famous writers from Proust to Kerouac to Dickens, Balzac delivers beautifully observed and complex characters with an unsurpassed attention to the details of society at the time, making him an exemplary of realism in European literature.
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Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
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Swann’s Way is the first of seven volumes in Remembrance of Things Past. It sets the scene with the narrator’s memories being famously provoked by the taste of that little cake, the madeleine, accompanied by a cup of lime-flowered tea. It is an unmatched portrait of fin-de-siècle France.
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Not a book one reads but inhabits & floats through
- By Darwin8u on 02-24-13
By: Marcel Proust
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Le père Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Michel Vuillermoz
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Rastignac, resté seul, fit quelques pas vers le haut du cimetière et vit Paris tortueusement couché le long des deux rives de la Seine où commençaient à briller les lumières. Ses yeux s'attachèrent presque avidement entre la colonne Vendôme et le dôme des Invalides, là où vivait ce beau monde dans lequel il avait voulu pénétrer. Il lança sur cette ruche bourdonnante un regard qui semblait par avance pomper le miel, et dit ces mots grandioses : "À nous deux maintenant !"
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Does not follow the text of the book
- By Charles F. Herr on 05-31-18
By: Honoré de Balzac
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The Magic Skin
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: John Bolen
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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"The possession of power, no matter how enormous, does not bring the knowledge how to use it." Raphael, a failed writer, deep in debt, and unrequited in love, is about to take a suicidal plunge into the Seine River. Just in time, he discovers the "Magic Skin" in an antiquity shop. Its supernatural powers grant every wish but it extracts a terrible toll! This parable depicts the malaise of 19th century France.
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poor reading
- By Maria on 02-04-04
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Old Goriot
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Balzac’s universally loved novel explores the great theme of money and its effect on the human character. Old Goriot is a lodger at Madame Vauquer’s Parisian boarding house. At first, his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are reduced, he is gradually shunned. He moves into smaller and less desirable rooms in the house, and soon his only remaining visitors are two beautiful young women. The mystery as to who they are and what is happening to Goriot’s fortune involves several other boarders, including Rastignac, an ambitious youth who hopes to rise in society.
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Horrible narrator
- By Diana on 03-30-11
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Pierre-François Garel
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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Par cette fresque aux allures de roman policier, Balzac dépeint et fustige les incohérences sociales, politiques et judiciaires de son époque. Paru sous forme de feuilleton entre 1838 et 1847, "Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes" est un roman foisonnant de personnages hauts en couleur mêlant intrigues amoureuses et policières dans le Paris interlope du XIXème siècle. Le jeune et beau Lucien, monté à la capitale avec des ambitions littéraires sera confronté aux milieux du crime et de la prostitution, tombera sous l'emprise d'un ancien bagnard.
By: Honoré de Balzac
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
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Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
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La cousine Bette
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Manon Combes
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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C'est le premier portrait de femme profondément destructrice, rancunière et laide que Balzac ait produit. Elle se voit apparentée à un animal malfaisant : "ses sourcils épais réunis par un bouquet, sa face longue et simiesque laissent deviner derrière la paysanne des Vosges un caractère de sauvage". Et c'est bien d'une sauvage dont il s'agit. La cousine est animée d'une rage et d'une passion impuissante. Telle une araignée tissant sa toile, elle gaspille une énergie folle à nuire sans recueillir les fruits de ses intrigues, pourtant patiemment élaborées.
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Lourde…
- By LK on 09-14-23
By: Honoré de Balzac
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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 Unknown Masterpiece
- By: Honoré de Balzac
- Narrated by: Katie Haigh
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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"The unknown masterpiece", or "Le chef-d'œuvre inconnu", is a story by the French author Honoré de Balzac. This short text was of tremendous importance in the world of art, for it holds a groundbreaking reflection about artistic creation: what does completion or failure mean, and how is it that technique does not guarantee either. Paul Cézanne famously said "I am Frenhofer", identifying with the old master around which the story revolves. Pablo Picasso himself was absolutely fascinated by the text, so much that he had his studio moved in the Parisian street named in the story; there, he painted his own masterpiece, Guernica.
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overpriced but an excellent book
- By T on 02-01-18
By: Honoré de Balzac
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The Brothers Karamazov
- Penguin Classics
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, David McDuff - translator
- Narrated by: Luke Thompson
- Length: 43 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, driven to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother, Smerdyakov. Dostoyevsky's dark masterwork evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur and everyone's faith in humanity is tested.
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Fix an error near the end of chapter 7.
- By Ragena Mae Brown on 10-17-21
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
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The Grapes of Wrath
- By: John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 21 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic The Grapes of Wrath remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of Tom Joad and his family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires, and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision.
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Wish I could give it 10 stars!
- By P. Minor on 07-18-14
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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The Brothers Karamazov
- (Bicentennial Edition)
- By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Ben Miles
- Length: 42 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons—the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.
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An extraordinary performance for one of the best novels
- By Sarah L.B. Garcia on 10-22-24
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others
What listeners say about Le Pere Goriot
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jack Rock
- 03-04-18
A minor masterpiece
David McCallion does a very pleasing job of both narrating and voicing a number of characters in Balzac's very modern seeming book. This is a story highly entertaining and with a poigniant and disturbing moral. It is a story written with subtle hilarity and blackest comedy. In brief, Pere Goriot (father Goriot) is the father who loves his two spoiled daughters to a point which nearly fails human understanding. Through his generosity to them he has fallen from millionaire to pauper. They by way of marriage and through his help have attained the titles of Countess and Baroness, but now that he is poor he is an embarrassment to them and they no longer acknowledge him. His family are his fellow boarders in a run down boarding house in the Latin Quarter in Paris where most of the action transpires. This book in it's humour reminded me of Confederacy of Dunces (another great book) it is at once absurdist and highly realistic. I enjoyed it thouroughly and may indeed listen to it again after a while. It was a pure pleasure.
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6 people found this helpful
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- E Rose
- 01-20-22
Very much enjoyed this reading.
I was a bit leery at first, but then I got into the pace of the reader. A very good reading of an important classic. Highly recommend.
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- SandyK
- 08-04-21
A Significant Novel
In my view, this is one of the 100 best novels, not at the top, but one well worth the attention of all who love serious literature.
The story, its fundamental tragedy, and the remarkably effective social commentary and criticism are of very high quality. And, of course, Balzac is a worthy writer of words and language.
The narrator was good, but, I think, not among the best. His reading of Eugene was, for me, effective, but, less so, for Goriot and the daughters.
In any event, I’m glad I heard it and would recommend it.
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- Dr. J. Adrienne Roth
- 02-20-22
Drudgery commentary
It was difficult to maintain interest. A classic novel of great disappointment. Though probably intended as commentary and selfishness and self sacrifice of early Paris, its base nature, it was marred by histrionic, overwrought, over sentimentality.
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