Life for Sale
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Narrated by:
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Kotaro Watanabe
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By:
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Yukio Mishima
About this listen
After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots - even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the crosshairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate. By turns wildly inventive, darkly comedic, and deeply surreal, in Life for Sale Yukio Mishima stunningly uses satire to explore the same dark themes that preoccupied him throughout his lifetime.
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Critic reviews
"Funny and horrific and curious and thoroughly entertaining.... [Life for Sale] should win Mishima a new generation of fans." (The Independent)
"This dark, funny social satire feels like something only Mishima could’ve written.... A slapstick comedy with a complex moral underpinning, and an intriguing departure from his introspective work.... Mishima’s pungent insights into the challenges of postwar Japanese life are threaded brilliantly throughout." (Publishers Weekly)
"An eccentric satire.... [An] offbeat, sardonic yarn about self-commodification and its discontents." (Kirkus Reviews)
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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Under the Midnight Sun
- A Novel
- By: Keigo Higashino, Alexander O. Smith - translator, Joseph Reeder
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In Osaka in 1973, the body of a murdered man is found in an abandoned building. Investigating the crime, Detective Sasagaki is unable to find the killer. Over the next 20 years, through the lens of a succession of characters, Higashino tells the story of two teens, Ryo and Yukiho, whose lives are most affected by the crime, and the obsessed detective, Sasagaki, who continues to investigate the murder, looking for the elusive truth.
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So many subplots and twists
- By Janani Vasudevan on 07-03-20
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Cocaine Blues
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Stephanie Daniel
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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Dolphin Junction
- Stories
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: David Thorpe, Emma Powell, Gerard Doyle, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume. In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five stand-alone nerve-racking and thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.
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Wicked treats
- By A+A on 11-24-21
By: Mick Herron
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The Nanny
- A Novel
- By: Gilly Macmillan
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett, Patience Tomlinson, Ben Eliot
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In this compulsively listenable tale of secrets, lies, and deception, Gilly Macmillan explores the darkest impulses and desires of the human heart. Diabolically clever, The Nanny reminds us that sometimes the truth hurts so much you’d rather hear the lie.
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Great gripping story!
- By Jordan Zenzel on 10-01-19
By: Gilly Macmillan
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Tsukiko, 38, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei", in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is 30 years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy, which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
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In this fascinating document, one of Japan's best known - and controversial - writers created what might be termed a new literary form. It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end, fits into none of them. The road Mishima took to salvation is a highly personal one. Yet here, ultimately, one detects the unmistakable tones of a self transcending the particular and attaining to a poetic vision of the universal.
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First Time is the Charm
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On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
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Sorry, but I didn't like the narrator.
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What listeners say about Life for Sale
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jay Quintana
- 02-25-21
Minor Mishima
Mishima, like Graham Greene, wrote two types of novels -- "serious" ones and ""entertainments." This is in the latter category. And I'm not sure if it even succeeds at that. It's an absurdist tale that is only marginally interesting. Every so often, though, we get flashes of Mishima's brilliance and for that reason, provided you're a fan of his, you should give this a listen. Otherwise, this will almost certainly disappoint. I have to say, too, that while the narrator speaks English well, it is not his first language and he does have trouble pronouncing a few words. (Definitely listen to the sample.) This might not be fair, but Mishima spoke English with very little traces of a Japanese accent (if he had one at all), so I don't think the narrator was the best choice for this book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sterling West
- 10-01-20
Entertaining and absurd.
I loved every character and just ate this novel up.
Fantastic escapism.
The narrator was fantastic, his Japanese accent made the listener feel more impeded in the culture and scenes.
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1 person found this helpful
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- GioSailor
- 07-21-24
Captivating in parts
This is a bit different, with some wild characters and situations - I found it captivating in parts and an interesting enough listen. The Japanese accented narration actually adds more flavor to the dish and is a plus. The story lost steam at the very end, the closing encounter lacking the super punch needed - can still be recommended for fans of H. Murakami and similar.
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- Chris
- 03-05-23
Excellent
The accent gives the story an edge in my opinion. I only had trouble with a few words here and there.
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- Robert
- 08-26-24
Suitable for a time and place.
This was a really interesting concept - what you gain when you have nothing left to lose. Quirky, fun characters. Inspiring questions. But I think this is also full of caricatures, tropes, and stereotypes. The narrator has a strong accent - something I think is intentional. Lots of "men's men" and "women's work" type of situations. Probably not acceptable now, but maybe could be viewed through a historical lens. I do think there are some significant cultural insights to be experienced.
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- DrCruse
- 03-13-22
Good story but accent makes it hard to listen
The story is entertaining and well worth experiencing, but I had to write a review to penalize the narration. The narrator has a pretty thick Japanese accent - for example frequently conflating the 'l' and 'r' sound. It can be distracting to hear him, for example, pronounce "concrete" as "conclete" and for me it breaks the immersion since it takes extra effort to understand. The reading is overall well done besides that and I still enjoyed it, but it's unfortunately not up to the standard that it should be.
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- Vyacheslav Varlakov
- 03-12-21
Book is good - Narration is just terrible
Heavy Japanese accent in narration totally spoiled beautiful book. Wondering why not native English in this case ...
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6 people found this helpful