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The Satyricon
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
Libidinous, licentious, salacious and very, very funny, The Satyricon is one of the most remarkable documents from ancient Rome. It tells the ribald story of Encolpius, a man of active and varied appetites (powered notably by his passion for his favourite lover, the handsome Giton), who plunges without inhibition into the life of Roman pleasures: orgies of food, feasting, abundant sex and escapades.
The kind of hedonism found occasionally in Roman mosaics is here brought to life. In the feast at the house of Trimalchio we have an extraordinary account of a Roman banquet where dish after dish - each more extravagant than the last - is presented to the diners, who lie on their couches for course after course. And after all that they still find the energy to indulge in intense pleasures of a different kind. Again and again.
There are historical questions around the author - Petronius (c27-66 CE), who lived during the time of Emperor Nero - and the text, which was originally much longer than the sections that have survived. This is of interest to academics but need not deter the enjoyment of the delightfully personal tale that has come down to us.
Among the characters Encolpius encounters is Eumolpus, a poet philosopher whose extravagant (and loud) journeys into epic poetry attract the Roman equivalent of rotten tomatoes. Very, very funny. It must be said, however, that this is literature, aiming high. It presents an engaging picture of Roman low life: 'women hot after gladiators or dusty muleteers', old men casting glances (and more) at shapely youths, and an elaborate ceremony to Priapus in an attempt to restore lost vigour. But it does so with style and elegance, full of classical references to poetry, history and philosophy though often with dry, humorous asides.
Not for the faint-hearted, The Satyricon is a delight from beginning to end, and especially in this hugely entertaining reading by Nicholas Boulton, which opens with a fascinating introduction to the work and its provenance.
Translation: Alfred R. Allinson.
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Story
Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.
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Falstaff brooks no rebuttal.
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Harold Bloom
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Gargantua and Pantagruel
- By: François Rabelais
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 34 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is a grotesque and carnivalesque collection of exuberant, fantastical stories that takes us from the ancient world through to the European Renaissance. At the heart of these tall tales are the giant Gargantua and his equally seismic son, Pantagruel. Containing magical adventures, maniacal punning, slapstick humor, erudite allusions, and just about any bodily function one can think of, here is quite possibly the zaniest, most risqué book ever written.
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The king of all the narrators
- By amazon on 02-13-20
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Quo Vadis
- A Narrative of the Time of Nero
- By: Henryk Sienkiewicz
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Marcus, a Roman officer in Nero's army, risks his career, his family, and even his life when he falls in love with a Christian woman named Callina. In order to win Callina's love, Marcus must come to understand the true meaning of her religion, even as Rome sinks under the excesses of Nero and Christians are thrown to the lions. Quo Vadis brims with passion and life as it explores one of the turning points in history.
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loved every word
- By TruckerOlli on 12-02-10
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King Lear
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Paul Scofield, Alec McCowen, Kenneth Branagh
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain’s senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the 80th birthday of Paul Scofield in January 2002.
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This cold night will turn us all to fools & madmen
- By Darwin8u on 11-01-17
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Don Quixote
- By: Miguel de Cervantes, Gerald J. Davis - translator
- Narrated by: John Hanks
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a hidalgo who reads so many chivalric novels that he decides to set out to revive chivalry, under the name Don Quixote. This is the story that a Nobel Prize Committee survey of one hundred of the world's best writers named "the greatest book of all time."
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A wonderful, magical listen
- By K on 12-01-13
By: Miguel de Cervantes, and others
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The Arabian Nights Entertainments
- By: Louis Rhead
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover his wife's infidelity. Enraged, he kills her. Full of pain and grief, the vizier continues on to the court of his brother, the king. But, once arrived at his brother's palace, the vizier soon discovers the king's wife is also involved in an even more flagrant infidelity.
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A PLEASURE NOT TO BE HURRIED
- By Marvin Brown on 09-21-16
By: Louis Rhead
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Troilus and Cressida
- Arkangel Shakespeare
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Ian Pepperell, Julia Ford
- Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins
- Original Recording
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Performance
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Story
Troy is besieged by the invading Greeks, but the young Trojan prince Troilus can think only of his love for Cressida. Her uncle Pandarus brings the two together, but after only one night news comes that Cressida must be sent to the enemy camp. There, as Troilus looks on, she yields to the wooing of the Greek Diomedes. The tragic story is undercut by the commentary of Thersites, who provides a cynical chorus.
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Wounds Heal Ill That Men Do Give Themselves
- By Darwin8u on 08-30-17
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Oroonoko
- By: Aphra Behn
- Narrated by: Clare Wille
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
A vivid love story and adventure tale, Oroonoko is a heroic slave narrative about a royal prince and his fight for freedom. The eponymous hero, Oroonoko, deemed royalty in one world and slave in another, is torn from his noble status and betrayed into slavery in Surinam, where he is reduced to chains, fetters, and shackles. But his high spirit and admirable character will not be suppressed.
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Outstanding Narration, Story Less So
- By Carsley on 07-14-18
By: Aphra Behn
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A Sentimental Journey
- By: Laurence Sterne
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Published just months before his death in 1768, A Sentimental Journey is Sterne's lightly fictionalised account of his own European travels; and being Sterne, it is more about digressions, misunderstandings and risqué jokes than the places he visits. Narrated by the (apparently) innocent Parson Yorick, who appeared in Sterne's other masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, it is full of anecdote and incident, and is far more about the people than the landscapes on the road from Calais.
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Glad I Listened, But…
- By SandyK on 09-03-24
By: Laurence Sterne
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Figures of Earth
- A Comedy of Appearances
- By: James Branch Cabell
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Figures of Earth, subtitled "A Comedy of Appearances", follows the vicissitudes of Dom Manuel the Redeemer from his lowly swineherd origins through his unlikely elevation to the Count of Poictesme, and beyond. Published in 1921, it was the second volume of “The Biography of Manuel”, Cabell’s great work about an imaginary land that also managed to skewer the world of his upbringing as a Southern Gentleman of Virginia, and nearly everything else, besides!
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What listeners say about The Satyricon
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- Live.3
- 03-17-19
An impactful historical work of art.
Audacious and extremely vulgar in the classical sense. But it is a fantastical story to listen to, you easily could get transfixed as an observing character. The sheer decadence and sinful nature is evident and wildly alive in this masterpiece.
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- Robert S. Becker
- 09-25-21
Boring
Based on the reputation of this classical novel and my faint recollection of Fellini’s movie, I expected edgy and exciting. Instead it reminded me of ugly modern tropes of self- and over-indulgence, of cooking shows on TV and Internet porn. The performance though is spirited and dynamic.
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- Morris Nelms
- 09-23-21
Salacious. Not for the timid. Incredible as well.
This is a multilayered work, with brilliant poems, cutting observations on human foibles, sex of every imaginable kind, and humor of many kinds as well. If you've never read it, you will not have much luck predicting where it will go next. It's a must read for any who would understand the pre-Christian world.
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- William
- 06-03-22
Wonderful
I love about this novel. The only thing I don’t appreciate are the priggish moral judgments the introduction cites from 19th century commentators.
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