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The Festival of Insignificance
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an unexpected and enchanting novel - the culmination of his life's work.
Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism - that's The Festival of Insignificance. Listeners who know Milan Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the "unserious" in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In Immortality, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together, talking and laughing. And in Slowness, Vera, the author's wife, says to her husband: "You've often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it.... I warn you: Watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait."
Now, far from watching out, Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work. A strange sort of summation. Strange sort of epilogue. Strange sort of laughter, inspired by our time, which is comical because it has lost all sense of humor. What more can we say? Nothing. Just listen.
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Story
Siddhartha, the ninth book written by Hermann Hesse, is about a young Indian boy who leaves his home in hopes of finding enlightenment with the wise "Goutama", which in this story is the Buddha. After learning what he can from Goutama, he decides to go off into the busy city and leads a life of greed and lust. When he realizes that the lifestyle is not fulfilling, and he reflects on his life, he goes to a river and contemplates suicide. However, it is here that Siddhartha meets a man who will change his life and help lead him to enlightenment.
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One of a Kind
- By Anonymous User on 04-04-20
By: Hermann Hesse
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Steppenwolf
- By: Hermann Hesse
- Narrated by: Peter Weller
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine.
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Save this Hesse novel for your midlife crisis.
- By Darwin8u on 03-02-14
By: Hermann Hesse
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Amulet
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: Adriana Sananes
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A tour de force, Amulet is a highly charged first-person, semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America. Amulet is a monologue, like Bolaño's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry", hanging out with the young poets in the cafés and bars of the University.
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Read The Savage Detectives first
- By Alicia Grega on 12-05-13
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
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The Collaborator
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1944 in Budapest, and the Germans have invaded. Miklos Nagy risks his life and confronts the dreaded Adolf Eichmann in an attempt save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the death camps. But no one could have foreseen the consequences.... It is 2005 in Sydney, and Annika Barnett sets out on a journey that takes her to Budapest and Tel Aviv to discover the truth about the mysterious man who rescued her grandmother in 1944.
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Ruined by the reader
- By Hayworth on 02-24-20
By: Diane Armstrong
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Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
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Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
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Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
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Myra Breckinridge
- A Novel (Myra and Myron, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal, Camille Paglia - introduction
- Narrated by: Michelle Hendley, Camille Paglia
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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"I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent, Myra's moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.
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Well performed
- By Kenny D on 06-08-19
By: Gore Vidal, and others
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Passing
- By: Nella Larsen
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1929, Passing is a remarkable exploration of the shifting racial and sexual boundaries in America. Larsen, a premier writer of the Harlem Renaissance, captures the rewards and dangers faced by two Negro women who pass for White in a deeply segregated world.
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If not for the Ending
- By William M Storm on 04-23-12
By: Nella Larsen
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Burr
- A Novel (Narratives of Empire, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.
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Finally! Vidal's Great Take on the Life of Burr
- By John Norton on 06-12-19
By: Gore Vidal
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Tender Is the Night
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
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Subtle yet grand
- By jb on 10-12-15
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The Magic Mountain
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 37 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912 and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents.
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A Magical Journey
- By Paul on 08-20-20
By: Thomas Mann
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Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
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Great insight
- By Kelly Houske on 02-02-19
By: Jan Morris
What listeners say about The Festival of Insignificance
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Phillip Barnard
- 11-10-19
Kundera’s still got it.
Witty, humorous, entertaining, and thought provoking, The Festival of Insignificance is a nice little summary of a man’s wonderful career as one of the great authors of our lifetime. Kundera is simply amazing.
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- Octavio
- 03-02-20
The Newest and I Hope not the Last Master Piece
Although it is brief, the Master K achieved a compelling, entertaining and deep story. Great digressions, a well chained structure and a witty creativity makes it one of my favorite K's novels.
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- Darwin8u
- 07-14-15
A Review of Little Significance.
“We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.”
- Milan Kundera, The Festival of Insignificance
Recently, I tried to sell my wife on the idea that the key to happiness was low expectations. The less she expected of me the happier she would be. Kundera, I'm afraid, would disagree. Or at least he would want to edit my maxim. For Kundera, the key to happiness might just be accepting our insignificance.
In this short, short novel Kundera uses the conversations of five friends (Ramon, Charles, Alain, D’Ardelo and Caliban) to explore ideas of life (jokes, despair, laughter, sex and death). In someways this novel seems like an existentialist Koan. Kundera is folding his little book up like a paper airplane, and letting it go. He is 83. He hopes he will be remembered, but ultimately, he has reached that point where he knows that even that desire is a bit absurd. Everybody dies. Most are forgotten. Only occasionally will we remember a Stalin or a why a town was named for a guy who peed his pants.
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16 people found this helpful
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- alianka
- 02-24-16
Beautiful book wonderfully narrated
Kundera is still a master. This book is like all his work crystalized into this one. Together with the perfect narration it really makes a work of art. I just loved every single minute of it.
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- Alan
- 07-25-15
Insignificant!
This book was a waste of time and mind. I'm probably in the wrong side of the critics that loved this book. I hated! The title was an honest warning! Richmond's narration saves the story with a very good reading skill. Sorry Kundera, this was horrible!
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