The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
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Narrated by:
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George Saunders
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By:
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George Saunders
About this listen
From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria.
An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone. Over six years in the writing, this novella is Saunders' first stand-alone, book-length work - and his first book for adults in five years.
Includes an original song by the author.
“The Phil Stomp” was written and performed by George Saunders and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Peter Coleman at Indigital Studios in Santa Cruz, California.
©2019 George Saunders (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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A-FREAKING-MAZING!!!
- By Bernadette on 05-30-21
By: Tia Williams
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American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
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Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
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CRAY
- By: Darrell Hammond, Elizabeth Stein
- Narrated by: Darrell Hammond
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Original Recording
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He is one of the longest-running cast members on Saturday Night Live, an American comedy genius renowned for his spot-on sendups of politicians and celebrities. But off-stage, Darrell Hammond’s life was anything but a joke. In CRAY, a special audio performance captured live onstage at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, Hammond brings to life his acclaimed memoir, God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem.
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Thanks for sharing
- By Nickisnotgary on 09-06-24
By: Darrell Hammond, and others
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Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Heads Will Roll
- By: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne
- Narrated by: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne, Tim Gunn, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Original Recording
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Heads Will Roll is an Audible Original from Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and her cocreator/costar (and real-life sister) Emily Lynne. Produced by Broadway Video, this is not an audiobook - it’s a 10-episode, star-studded audio comedy that features performances from Meryl Streep, Tim Gunn, Peter Dinklage, Queer Eye’s Fab Five, and so many more. Please note: This content is not for kids.
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More like this please
- By Anon893 on 05-03-19
By: Kate McKinnon, and others
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Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History
- By: Phil Mason
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Hilarious, fascinating, and a roller coaster of dizzying, historical what-ifs, Napoleon's Hemorrhoids is a potpourri for serious historians and casual history buffs. In one of Phil Mason's many revelations, you'll learn that Communist jets were two minutes away from opening fire on American planes during the Cuban missile crisis, when they had to turn back as they were running out of fuel. You'll discover that before the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon's painful hemorrhoids prevented him from mounting his horse to survey the battlefield.
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They just throw the facts too fast
- By Concerned_llama on 12-11-20
By: Phil Mason
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Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’ debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way. In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world.
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>>BUCKLE. UP.<<
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George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is comprised of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the listener across the rocky political landscape of modern America.
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George Saunders is a genius!
- By caitlyngarofolo on 05-31-20
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Congratulations, by the Way
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Three months after George Saunders gave a graduation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of The New York Times, where its simple, uplifting message struck a deep chord. Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders’ words tap in to a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Powerful, funny, and wise, Congratulations, by the Way is an inspiring message from one of today’s most influential and original writers.
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Great Speech
- By Lucas Samples on 09-23-20
By: George Saunders
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Tenth of December
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Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
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Be prepared for something different...but good!
- By Mr. D on 02-21-14
By: George Saunders
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The “best short story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose—wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned—Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.
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Extraordinary
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>>BUCKLE. UP.<<
- By Mary K Foster on 05-23-21
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George Saunders is a genius!
- By caitlyngarofolo on 05-31-20
By: George Saunders
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Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders gives us, in his inventive and beloved voice, this best-selling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.
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Greatest living short story author reads own work.
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In Persuasion Nation
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From the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables - all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection from an author hailed as the heir to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.
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Disappointing
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A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
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For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
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An innovative and fresh listening experience
- By Scott Garrioch on 01-14-21
By: George Saunders
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The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
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Gappers will get your goat. Literally. If you don't brush them off and return them to the ocean, these bright orange, many-eyed creatures will cover your goats, and the goats will stop giving milk. In a village called Frip, goat's milk was the entire economy. Three families lived there - the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her widowed father, who wanted everything to remain the same. It didn't. One day, the Gappers decided for a good reason to concentrate on Capable's goats. Oh, how the Romos and Ronsens turned their backs on the gapper-ridden Capable!
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Imagination & simplicity
- By Cathy A. Briggs on 01-02-24
By: George Saunders
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How Much of These Hills Is Gold
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Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their Western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.
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Artistically written
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The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story
- By: John Freeman - editor
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- Unabridged
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In the past 50 years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of genres have brought this unique US genre a thrilling burst of energy. This rich anthology celebrates this avalanche of talent. Beginning in 1970, it culls together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including - for the first time in a literary anthology - science fiction, horror, and fantasy.
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Too dark for my taste
- By Lazy Chicken on 10-03-22
What listeners say about The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Emily Jones
- 12-03-21
Excellent story
it's a story about real life even though it seems so strange at first. amazing how barbaric humans can be. read for a class, required. really enjoyed. gets people to think, I hope. love the author narrating
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- Jaclyn Brown
- 05-10-23
Odd and interesting
This is my second read by George Saunders and I loved it. His imagination is wild and he plays with time in an interesting way. I love his minimalist word choice. I have just enough information to picture these bizarre worlds he creates.
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- Paul Frandano
- 12-08-21
Gogol and Lewis Carroll and Saunders Hold Hands...
...and pass through the Looking Glass...into a strange, strangely invented world. We know this at the very outset, from an absurd first paragraph that tells us what we most need to know about this world. "It’s one thing to be a small country, but the country of Inner Horner was so small only one Inner Hornerite at a time could fit inside, and the other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turns to live in their own country while standing very timidly in the surrounding country of Outer Horner."
Saunders' Inner and Outer Horner is cluttered with absurdities, absurdities that, as we go along, with its absurd citizenry and its absurd President and its absurdly ambitious Phil of the title, take shape as a parable for our times, a parable of political power gone absolute and thus mad, written by Saunders 11 years earlier than the reality that descended on the world's greatest Democracy...a quick, satisfying novella that should stimulate some readerly thought along one or more of several paths.
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- ibillinsly@gmail
- 06-04-19
4.0 stars
This is a funny and entertaining novella. It’s probably fine for kids too. Saunders also narrates this audiobook, and he’s a really good narrator. It’s hard to believe he wrote this in back 2005. This novel is probably more relevant today than when he first released it. It's a quirky tale, but it's also brief and frightening at the same time.
Overall rating: 4.0 stars
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6 people found this helpful
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- B Johnson
- 08-15-22
loved it!
Loved it! Saunders' inimitable voice puts me in mind of Mark Twain and
James Thurber.
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- Darwin8u
- 12-24-19
“Our country is big, let us be big.”
This novella is one part Animal Farm, one part Gulliver's Travels. Part parable, part satire, it is (not to give to much of too little away) a short novella about border disputes, leadership, the media, and standing up to oppression. It was published in 2005 under the GWB administration, but feels (because of global border disputes) more relevant today in 2019 than even it was in 2005.
It is cute, at times funny, quick, and narratively interesting. It just isn't Saunders great. It is a minor moon and not even a planet in his solar system. But still, it is a "lush, full moon" at that.
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2 people found this helpful