
Roman Stories
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
3 months free
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
About this listen
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER, NPR • The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth • Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories
"A delectable, sun-washed treat . . . the stories have the beating heart of the city itself, a place of magnificent decay and vibrant, varied life."—Vogue
In “The Boundary,” one family vacations in the Roman countryside, though we see their lives through the eyes of the caretaker’s daughter, who nurses a wound from her family’s immigrant past. In “P’s Parties,” a Roman couple, now empty nesters, finds comfort and community with foreigners at their friend’s yearly birthday gathering—until the husband crosses a line.
And in “The Steps,” on a public staircase that connects two neighborhoods and the residents who climb up and down it, we see Italy’s capital in all of its social and cultural variegations, filled with the tensions of a changing city: visibility and invisibility, random acts of aggression, the challenge of straddling worlds and cultures, and the meaning of home.
These are splendid, searching stories, written in Jhumpa Lahiri’s adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz. Stories steeped in the moods of Italian master Alberto Moravia and guided, in the concluding tale, by the ineluctable ghost of Dante Alighieri, whose words lead the protagonist toward a new way of life.
©2023 Jhumpa Lahiri (P)2023 Random House Audio
Interview: Jhumpa Lahiri denounces "being authentic"
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Tie That Binds
- By: Kent Haruf
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.
-
-
Sad, No Real Conclusion and Pointless
- By Debbie on 03-28-24
By: Kent Haruf
-
The Borrower
- A Novel
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, 10-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan.
-
-
Great story and great performance!
- By Anonymous User on 01-29-21
By: Rebecca Makkai
-
The Wayward Bus
- By: John Steinbeck, Gary Schamhorst - introduction
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California's back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future. This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst.
-
-
Steinbeck always touches the heart, makes you feel
- By Kelly on 05-08-17
By: John Steinbeck, and others
-
Ex Libris
- 100+ Books to Read and Reread
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Books can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures, national boundaries, and historical eras”, Kakutani writes in her introduction to Ex Libris. Here listeners will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth listening or relistening; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation.
By: Michiko Kakutani
-
The Professor's House
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a man in his fifties who has devoted his life to his work, his wife, his garden, and his daughters, and achieved success with all of them. But when St. Peter is called on to move to a new, more comfortable house, something in him rebels. And although at first that rebellion consists of nothing more than mild resistance to his family's wishes, it imperceptibly comes to encompass the entire order of his life.
-
-
Gently compelling
- By TiffanyD on 08-12-19
By: Willa Cather
-
A Bright Ray of Darkness
- A Novel
- By: Ethan Hawke
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hawke's narrator is a young man in torment, disgusted with himself after the collapse of his marriage, still half hoping for a reconciliation that would allow him to forgive himself and move on as he clumsily, and sometimes hilariously, tries to manage the wreckage of his personal life with whiskey and sex. What saves him is theater: in particular, the challenge of performing the role of Hotspur in a production of Henry IV under the leadership of a brilliant director, helmed by one of the most electrifying - and narcissistic - Falstaff's of all time.
-
-
A Powerfully written dissection of an Actor’s Soul.
- By Tom on 02-14-21
By: Ethan Hawke
-
The Tie That Binds
- By: Kent Haruf
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.
-
-
Sad, No Real Conclusion and Pointless
- By Debbie on 03-28-24
By: Kent Haruf
-
The Borrower
- A Novel
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, 10-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan.
-
-
Great story and great performance!
- By Anonymous User on 01-29-21
By: Rebecca Makkai
-
The Wayward Bus
- By: John Steinbeck, Gary Schamhorst - introduction
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California's back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future. This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst.
-
-
Steinbeck always touches the heart, makes you feel
- By Kelly on 05-08-17
By: John Steinbeck, and others
-
Ex Libris
- 100+ Books to Read and Reread
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Books can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures, national boundaries, and historical eras”, Kakutani writes in her introduction to Ex Libris. Here listeners will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth listening or relistening; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation.
By: Michiko Kakutani
-
The Professor's House
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a man in his fifties who has devoted his life to his work, his wife, his garden, and his daughters, and achieved success with all of them. But when St. Peter is called on to move to a new, more comfortable house, something in him rebels. And although at first that rebellion consists of nothing more than mild resistance to his family's wishes, it imperceptibly comes to encompass the entire order of his life.
-
-
Gently compelling
- By TiffanyD on 08-12-19
By: Willa Cather
-
A Bright Ray of Darkness
- A Novel
- By: Ethan Hawke
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hawke's narrator is a young man in torment, disgusted with himself after the collapse of his marriage, still half hoping for a reconciliation that would allow him to forgive himself and move on as he clumsily, and sometimes hilariously, tries to manage the wreckage of his personal life with whiskey and sex. What saves him is theater: in particular, the challenge of performing the role of Hotspur in a production of Henry IV under the leadership of a brilliant director, helmed by one of the most electrifying - and narcissistic - Falstaff's of all time.
-
-
A Powerfully written dissection of an Actor’s Soul.
- By Tom on 02-14-21
By: Ethan Hawke
-
The Light of Luna Park
- By: Addison Armstrong
- Narrated by: Rachel L. Jacobs, Karissa Vacker
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York City, 1926. Nurse Althea Anderson's heart is near breaking when she witnesses another premature baby die at Bellevue Hospital. So when she reads an article detailing the amazing survival rates of babies treated in incubators in an exhibit at Luna Park, Coney Island, it feels like the miracle she has been searching for. But the doctors at Bellevue dismiss Althea and this unconventional medicine, forcing her to make a choice between a baby's life and the doctors' wishes that will change everything.
-
-
So not believable and extremely sappy * Spoilers*
- By gogacks on 09-26-23
-
Florida
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Lauren Groff
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a decade ago, Groff moved to her adopted home state of Florida. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center. Storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats and mysteries are of a human, emotional, and psychological nature. Groff's evocative storytelling and knife-sharp intelligence first transport the listener, then jolt us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty....
-
-
Don't buy the audiobook
- By Ethan Gouveia on 06-16-18
By: Lauren Groff
-
The Great White Bard
- How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race
- By: Farah Karim-Cooper
- Narrated by: Farah Karim-Cooper, Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor Farah Karim-Cooper has dedicated her career to the Bard, which is why she wants to take the playwright down from his pedestal to unveil a Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. If we persist in reading Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril.
-
-
So enlightening!
- By eric lewis on 02-12-24
-
Long Division
- A Novel
- By: Kiese Laymon
- Narrated by: Ruffin Prentiss III, Jaime Lincoln Smith
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985.
-
-
Quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, but...
- By Sherrye LeRoy on 05-08-25
By: Kiese Laymon
-
Cup of Gold
- A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History
- By: John Steinbeck, Susan F. Beegel - introduction
- Narrated by: Ronan Vibert
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the mid-1650s through the 1660s, Henry Morgan, a pirate and outlaw of legendary viciousness, ruled the Spanish Main. He ravaged the coasts of Cuba and America, striking terror wherever he went. Morgan was obsessive. He had two driving ambitions: to possess the beautiful woman called La Santa Roja and to conquer Panama, the "cup of gold".
-
-
Not your usual Steinbeck novel
- By Andrew on 06-03-15
By: John Steinbeck, and others
-
The Puttermesser Papers
- A Novel
- By: Cynthia Ozick
- Narrated by: Natasha Lyonne
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yearning for a life of the mind, Ruth Puttermesser finds herself mired in the lowest circles of city bureaucracy. Her love life hopeless, her fantasies more influential than wan reality, she nevertheless turns out to be the best mayor New York City has ever elected. Soon enough, though, paradise gained becomes paradise lost, and—even for a wistful visionary like Puttermesser—the problem of disappointment remains unresolved.
-
-
Disjointed, but amusing
- By FD on 06-05-24
By: Cynthia Ozick
-
The Astonishing Life of August March
- A Novel
- By: Aaron Jackson
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abandoned as an infant by his actress mother in her theater dressing room, August March was raised by an ancient laundress. Highly intelligent, a tad feral, August is a true child of the theater - able to recite Shakespeare before he knew the alphabet. But like all productions, August’s wondrous time inside the theater comes to a close, and he finds himself in the wilds of postwar New York City, where he quickly rises from pickpocket street urchin to star student at the stuffiest boarding school in the nation.
-
-
Delightfully entertaining
- By RueRue on 04-21-20
By: Aaron Jackson
-
Shadows on the Rock
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1697, Quebec is an island of French civilization perched on a bare gray rock amid a wilderness of trackless forests. For many of its settlers, Quebec is a place of exile, so remote that an entire winter passes without a word from home. But to 12-year-old Cécile Auclair, the rock is home, where even the formidable Governor Frontenac entertains children in his palace and beavers lie beside the lambs in a Christmas créche.
-
-
wonderful
- By carol perez on 05-18-21
By: Willa Cather
-
The Friday Night Club
- A Novel of Artist Hilma af Klint and Her Creative Circle
- By: Sofia Lundberg, Alyson Richman, M.J. Rose
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert, Pete Cross, Alyson Richman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Early 1900s: The world belongs to men, and the art world in Stockholm, Sweden, is no different, until Hilma af Klint brings together a mysterious group of female painters and writers—Anna, Cornelia, Sigrid, and Mathilda—to form their own emotional and artistic support system. The members of the Friday Night Club find themselves thrust into uncharted territory when Hilma and her best friend, Anna, begin dabbling in the occult, believing that through séances they can channel unseen spirits to help them achieve their potential as artists.
-
-
The most important book I’ve read in many years
- By Dane R Rowley on 09-30-23
By: Sofia Lundberg, and others
-
Sabrina & Corina
- Stories
- By: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado - a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite - these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the Earth but tend to rise during land disputes.
-
-
Absolutely wonderful
- By Brady on 05-21-19
-
The Woman in the Dunes
- By: Kobo Abe
- Narrated by: Julian Cihi
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together, their fates become intertwined as they work side-by-side at this Sisyphean task.
-
-
Nihilistic horror
- By Mr. Sagan on 07-20-19
By: Kobo Abe
-
At the Edge of the Orchard
- By: Tracy Chevalier
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Mark Bramhall, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the 50 apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.
-
-
The performance was superb
- By cheryl retired bookseller on 05-30-17
By: Tracy Chevalier
Thought provoking .
the painful lives
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A repertoire of fine stories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Beautiful.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
beautiful heartbreaking stories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mediocre, with negative tone and viewpoints
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved it!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Able to touch moist poignant sentiments and make aspects og stories hauntingly beautiful
Emotional resonance
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The twist of the story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
one of my favorite authors writes a gloomy book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Roman steps
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.