
The Charterhouse of Parma
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
About this listen
In the coming-of-age story, we follow a young Italian nobleman, Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, on many adventures, including his experiences at the Battle of Waterloo, and romantic intrigues.
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Story
When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naive son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by criticising the landowning way of life and by his outspoken determination to sweep away the traditional values of contemporary Russian society.
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The greatest novel I'll ever read
- By Dan Harlow on 07-07-13
By: Ivan Turgenev
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Cool Hand Luke
- By: Donn Pearce
- Narrated by: Mark Hammer
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Based in part on Donn Pearce’s own experiences working on a Florida road gang, this classic story of Cool Hand Luke, the defiant survivor who refused to be defeated by the forces of corrupt authority, is earthy, sensitively written, and revealing.
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Like the movie but not
- By Maryann on 11-18-17
By: Donn Pearce
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Of Human Bondage
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Philip Carey, a sensitive orphan born with a clubfoot, finds himself in desperate need of passion and inspiration. He abandons his studies to travel, first to Heidelberg and then to Paris, where he nurses ambitions of becoming a great artist. Philip's youthful idealism erodes, however, as he comes face-to-face with his own mediocrity and lack of impact on the world. After returning to London to study medicine, he becomes wildly infatuated with Mildred, a vulgar, tawdry waitress, and begins a doomed love affair.
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You won't want it to end!
- By Rbjurnee on 04-18-11
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In the First Circle
- By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harry T. Willets - translator
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 31 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949. The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state - or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps, and almost certain death.
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One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Colin Farrell
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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This quintessential coming-of-age novel describes the early life of Stephen Dedalus. It is set in Ireland during the 19th century, which was a time of emerging Irish nationalism and conservative Catholicism. Highly autobiographical in nature, the work is also notable for its being the first one in which Joyce uses innovative “stream of consciousness” writing style. A Portrait... follows Stephen Dedalus from his babyhood into early adulthood.
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Bitterly disappointed
- By James on 01-29-19
By: James Joyce
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Darkness at Noon
- By: Arthur Koestler
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A fictional portrayal of an aging revolutionary, this novel is a powerful commentary on the nightmare politics of the troubled 20th century. Born in Hungary in 1905, a defector from the Communist Party in 1938, and then arrested in both Spain and France for his political views, Arthur Koestler writes from a wealth of personal experience.
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Literature as the ‘living memory’ of nations
- By ESK on 01-23-13
By: Arthur Koestler
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Why Read the Classics?
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here - spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism - are 36 immediately relevant, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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The Morning Star
- By: Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Edoardo Ballerini, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 23 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar; the journalist Jostein is out on the town; and his wife, Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is.
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Great read for religious scholars
- By matt m on 01-13-22
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Difficult Loves
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.
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Simple tales; just right
- By whosis on 04-09-25
By: Italo Calvino
I enjoyed the pronouncing of names and titles, the Italian puns, fights, court intrigue, and so much more. Charterhouse of Parma is a remarkable book and what’s more, being offered free of cost. I would also recommend Red and Black which has a hero at the centre who also finds himself engaging in adultery and revering Napoleon, and much like in the pertinent story, the character has an unhappy ending.
To the happy few
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A classic you don't want to miss
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Beautiful in every way
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Lesser novel by a great writer
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Where does The Charterhouse of Parma rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
very highWho was your favorite character and why?
Mosca, a complicated characterWhat does Edoardo Ballerini bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Depth, feeling, and wonderful pronunciation.If only all your readers of books with European words could pronounce them as well as he does.
I look for books that he reads.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
all of itAny additional comments?
Get Ballerini to do more readings.Napoleonic fiction
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I see many reasons why.
But I don’t think it’s great, however great might be defined.
I won’t bother you with all the features that are traditionally regarded as excellent or those that I admire. I’ll just say that I think the plot unwinds in ways that aren’t particularly interesting, and the characters sort of meander on to the end on disparate courses that seem rather contrived to me.
I take leave of the story with little of the inspiration or glow I tend to have after reading a great piece of literature.
The narration is more than satisfactory.
Highly Regarded, But…
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Any additional comments?
This is a remarkable enjoyable epic of a young man in search of love encountering the ways of the world which have not changed since this book was written. It reminded me of Voltaire's Candide but far more sophisticated in nuance and breadth and soul. It's comparison of the French and Italian personas is very interesting.Another version of Candide
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Started out great, but disappointed
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Amazing novel finally available on audio!
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Surprisingly modern
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