The Stalin Epigram
A Novel
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
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
John Lee
-
Anne Flosnik
-
By:
-
Robert Littell
About this listen
A master of historical detail and cultural authenticity, best-selling author Robert Littell based this novel in part on a memorable, intimate meeting with Mandelstam's wife in 1979. Narrated by Mandelstam's wife, his friends Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, and Mandelstam himself, this lucid account of the relationships between the artists, politicians, and proletariat of Stalinist Russia is an astounding moment in history brought to life by a perceptive, immensely talented writer.
©2006 Robert Littell (P)2009 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Once and Future Spy
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An elite plan is afoot, a plan so secret and dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within the innermost core of the CIA. There is virtually no paper trail—but somehow the plan has sprung a leak, and the plotters must urgently plug it—or face deadly consequences. As clandestine worlds collide, the present faces the past, and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. What is the truth? Whose truth should be believed?
-
-
A Challenge and it's worth it!
- By Kay M on 07-22-03
By: Robert Littell
-
The Amateur
- A Novel of Revenge
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlie Heller is an ace cryptographer for the Company. He's a quiet man with a quiet job in a back office. But when terrorists shoot his fiancee in cold blood and Heller learns that the Agency has decided not to pursue those responsible, his life takes an abrupt turn. He was not a blackmailer but he will force the CIA's hand. He was not an assassin but he will penetrate the Iron Curtain with the intent to kill. Heller is an amateur with a one-in-a-million chance of success.
-
-
Makes you wonder what CIA really means
- By Clement on 02-10-04
By: Robert Littell
-
The Company
- A Novel of the CIA
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 41 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"If Robert Littell didn't invent the American spy novel," says Tom Clancy, "he should have." In this spectacular Cold-War-as-Alice-in-Wonderland epic, Littell, "the American le Carre," takes us down the rabbit hole and into the labyrinthine world of espionage that has been the CIA for the last half-century. "Ostensibly a single novel, The Company can also be listened to as an anthology of cracking good spy stories," says ( Publishers Weekly).
-
-
My Review of the Reviews
- By Matthew on 03-31-04
By: Robert Littell
-
The Man from St. Petersburg
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: Richard Armitage
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
His name was Feliks. He came to London to commit a murder that would change history. A master manipulator, he had many weapons at his command, but against him were ranged the whole of the English police, a brilliant and powerful lord, and the young Winston Churchill himself. These odds would have stopped any man in the world - except the man from St. Petersburg.
-
-
Riveting historical fiction
- By Thomas P. O'Connor on 04-14-21
By: Ken Follett
-
Sashenka
- A Novel
- By: Simon Montefiore
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 19 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the best-selling tradition of Dr. Zhivago, Sophie's Choice, and The Island, this is an epic story of revolution, passion, and betrayal - and one woman whose extraordinary secret lies hidden for half a century.
-
-
Historical Novel That Touches Your Soul...
- By DR on 02-20-09
By: Simon Montefiore
-
Box 88
- Lachlan Kite Series, Book 1
- By: Charles Cumming
- Narrated by: Charlie Ansen
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black-ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence - but even the best spy can't anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he's sworn on his own life to protect.
-
-
Excellent
- By enriver on 01-20-22
By: Charles Cumming
-
The Once and Future Spy
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An elite plan is afoot, a plan so secret and dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within the innermost core of the CIA. There is virtually no paper trail—but somehow the plan has sprung a leak, and the plotters must urgently plug it—or face deadly consequences. As clandestine worlds collide, the present faces the past, and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. What is the truth? Whose truth should be believed?
-
-
A Challenge and it's worth it!
- By Kay M on 07-22-03
By: Robert Littell
-
The Amateur
- A Novel of Revenge
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlie Heller is an ace cryptographer for the Company. He's a quiet man with a quiet job in a back office. But when terrorists shoot his fiancee in cold blood and Heller learns that the Agency has decided not to pursue those responsible, his life takes an abrupt turn. He was not a blackmailer but he will force the CIA's hand. He was not an assassin but he will penetrate the Iron Curtain with the intent to kill. Heller is an amateur with a one-in-a-million chance of success.
-
-
Makes you wonder what CIA really means
- By Clement on 02-10-04
By: Robert Littell
-
The Company
- A Novel of the CIA
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 41 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"If Robert Littell didn't invent the American spy novel," says Tom Clancy, "he should have." In this spectacular Cold-War-as-Alice-in-Wonderland epic, Littell, "the American le Carre," takes us down the rabbit hole and into the labyrinthine world of espionage that has been the CIA for the last half-century. "Ostensibly a single novel, The Company can also be listened to as an anthology of cracking good spy stories," says ( Publishers Weekly).
-
-
My Review of the Reviews
- By Matthew on 03-31-04
By: Robert Littell
-
The Man from St. Petersburg
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: Richard Armitage
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
His name was Feliks. He came to London to commit a murder that would change history. A master manipulator, he had many weapons at his command, but against him were ranged the whole of the English police, a brilliant and powerful lord, and the young Winston Churchill himself. These odds would have stopped any man in the world - except the man from St. Petersburg.
-
-
Riveting historical fiction
- By Thomas P. O'Connor on 04-14-21
By: Ken Follett
-
Sashenka
- A Novel
- By: Simon Montefiore
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 19 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the best-selling tradition of Dr. Zhivago, Sophie's Choice, and The Island, this is an epic story of revolution, passion, and betrayal - and one woman whose extraordinary secret lies hidden for half a century.
-
-
Historical Novel That Touches Your Soul...
- By DR on 02-20-09
By: Simon Montefiore
-
Box 88
- Lachlan Kite Series, Book 1
- By: Charles Cumming
- Narrated by: Charlie Ansen
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black-ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence - but even the best spy can't anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he's sworn on his own life to protect.
-
-
Excellent
- By enriver on 01-20-22
By: Charles Cumming
-
The Torqued Man
- A Novel
- By: Peter Mann
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A brilliant debut novel, at once teasing literary thriller and a darkly comic blend of history and invention, The Torqued Man is set in wartime Berlin and propelled by two very different but equally mesmerizing voices: a German spy handler and his Irish secret agent, neither of whom are quite what they seem.
-
-
A sordid and thrilling trek through the bowels of Teutonia
- By Todd Brozman on 04-04-22
By: Peter Mann
-
The Alice Network
- A Novel
- By: Kate Quinn
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive.
-
-
We are standing on the shoulders of giants...
- By Marie on 02-25-18
By: Kate Quinn
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
-
-
Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
-
The Storyteller
- By: Jodi Picoult
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Jennifer Ikeda, Edoardo Ballerini, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jodi Picoult's poignant number one New York Times best-selling novels about family and love tackle hot-button issues head on. In The Storyteller, Sage Singer befriends Josef Weber, a beloved Little League coach and retired teacher. But then Josef asks Sage for a favor she never could have imagined - to kill him. After Josef reveals the heinous act he committed, Sage feels he may deserve that fate. But would his death be murder or justice?
-
-
The Baker, The Nun, The Virgin and The Monster
- By Suzn F on 03-05-13
By: Jodi Picoult
-
The Sympathizer
- A Novel
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Francois Chau
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2016. It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.
-
-
The Great Vietnamese Novel(Port)Nguyen's Complaint
- By Joe Kraus on 03-31-16
-
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, they create the Escapist.
-
-
A World I DON'T Ever Want to Escape From.
- By Darwin8u on 06-12-12
By: Michael Chabon
-
I Was Anastasia
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Lawhon
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood, Sian Thomas, Ariel Lawhon
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.
-
-
Even knowing the true story,still enjoyed the book
- By Emily on 04-02-18
By: Ariel Lawhon
-
In the First Circle
- By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harry T. Willets - translator
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 31 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
-
The Honest Spy
- By: Andreas Kollender, Steve Anderson - translator
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Schindler's List comes a thrilling novel based on the heroic true story of Fritz Kolbe, a widowed civil servant in Adolf Hitler's foreign ministry. Recognizing that millions of lives are at stake, Kolbe uses his position to pass information to the Americans - risking himself and the people he holds most dear - and embarks on a dangerous double life as the Allies' most important spy.
-
-
Beautifully written and narrated WWII story of...
- By Wayne on 01-18-18
By: Andreas Kollender, and others
-
The White Rose Network
- Based on a True Story (A Heartbreaking World War 2 Novel)
- By: Ellie Midwood
- Narrated by: Alison Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophie was born to be a rebel, raised by parents who challenged the brutal Nazi regime. Determined to follow in their footsteps, she leaves for university, defying Hitler’s command for women to stay at home. She knows instantly that she isn’t alone, that there are more courageous souls like her who will fight against evil. But it is only a matter of time before the Gestapo closes in.... And when Sophie is imprisoned in an interrogation room, staring a Nazi officer in the eye, will she take their secrets to her grave?
-
-
A story of incredible bravery
- By V. Temple on 11-30-22
By: Ellie Midwood
-
The Wife Who Risked Everything
- By: Ellie Midwood
- Narrated by: Alison Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margot and her adoring husband, Jochen, are madly in love. But in Nazi Germany, being in love is the most dangerous act of all. A marriage between Margot, a German woman, and Jochen, a Jewish man, is forbidden under Hitler’s tyrannical rule. Yet when friends cross the street to avoid Margot and her own mother rejects her, she stays loyal to Jochen. When the Gestapo break into their home and steal their belongings, she remains steadfast. And when soldiers arrest Jochen, imprisoning him with countless others, Margot will stop at nothing to save him.
-
-
Beautiful narrative of accurate history!
- By Clayton on 12-19-24
By: Ellie Midwood
-
The Tsar of Love and Techno
- Stories
- By: Anthony Marra
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Beata Pozniak, Rustam Kasymov
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This stunning, exquisitely written collection introduces a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking. A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love.
-
-
The Nutcracker's Cosmonautic March
- By W Perry Hall on 10-08-15
By: Anthony Marra
Critic reviews
"Not since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has an author captured the crushing sense of foreboding that hung over Uncle Joe’s Soviet state with the clear-eyed acuity that imbues every page of Robert Littell’s The Stalin Epigram. … [It’s also] a quintessentially Russian love story, which virtually guarantees that the rose’s thorn will outlive its petals." (BookPage)
"[T]here is a surreal quality to the story that makes it by turns gruesome, darkly absurd and hysterical. … The strength of this narrative lies in the straightforward description of the awful absurdities, the brutality, the bureaucratic pretzel logic and the mental and physical responses to it, that were required to survive Stalin’s regime." (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Related to this topic
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
-
-
Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
-
In the First Circle
- By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harry T. Willets - translator
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 31 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
-
The Fixer
- A Novel
- By: Bernard Malamud
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev and, after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder.
-
-
Technical Problems Need To Ne Resolved
- By REX LANYI on 12-24-20
By: Bernard Malamud
-
The Kindly Ones
- By: Jonathan Littell
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 39 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
-
-
Office politics in hell
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 04-02-13
By: Jonathan Littell
-
House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
-
-
Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
-
Bend Sinister
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.
-
-
A fantastic fairytale of fascism
- By Darwin8u on 12-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
-
-
Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
-
In the First Circle
- By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harry T. Willets - translator
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 31 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
-
The Fixer
- A Novel
- By: Bernard Malamud
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev and, after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder.
-
-
Technical Problems Need To Ne Resolved
- By REX LANYI on 12-24-20
By: Bernard Malamud
-
The Kindly Ones
- By: Jonathan Littell
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 39 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The chilling fictional memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue, a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
-
-
Office politics in hell
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 04-02-13
By: Jonathan Littell
-
House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
-
-
Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
-
Bend Sinister
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.
-
-
A fantastic fairytale of fascism
- By Darwin8u on 12-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
Dead Man's Land
- By: Robert Ryan
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the trenches of Flanders Fields, men are dying in the thousands every day. So one more death shouldn't be a surprise. But then a body turns up with bizarre injuries, and Sherlock Holmes' former sidekick, Dr. John Watson - unable to fight for his country due to injury but able to serve it through his medical expertise - finds his suspicions raised.
-
-
Watson is wonderful, amid very grim surroundings
- By L. Gutman on 03-01-18
By: Robert Ryan
-
The Dutch Wife
- By: Ellen Keith
- Narrated by: Abby Craden, Eric Martin, Charlie Thurston
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amsterdam, May 1943. As the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or - for a chance at survival - join the camp brothel. On the other side of the barbed wire, SS Officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to meet his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, their lives change forever.
-
-
Holocaust Porn???
- By Peteylovesyou on 08-03-19
By: Ellen Keith
-
The Romanov Conspiracy
- A Thriller
- By: Glenn Meade
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Laura Pavlov, an American forensic archaeologist, is about to unravel a mystery that promises to solve one of the twentieth century’s greatest enigmas. Dr. Pavlov is a member of an international team digging on the outskirts of the present-day Russian city of Ekaterinburg, where the Romanov royal family was executed by their captors in July 1918. When Pavlov discovers two bodies perfectly preserved in permafrost in a disused mine shaft, they offer dramatic new clues to the disappearance of the Romanovs and, in particular, their famous daughter, Princess Anastasia, whose murder has always been shrouded in doubt.
-
-
Ho- Hum
- By monet on 10-03-12
By: Glenn Meade
-
Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
-
-
Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
-
Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lawyer from the London finance house of Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger" Single disappears into thin air.
-
-
The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
-
Winter Journey
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.
-
-
Historical Story Marred by Unnecessary Fluff
- By Debbie on 11-30-15
By: Diane Armstrong
-
Amberlough
- A Novel
- By: Lara Elena Donnelly
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Covert agent Cyril DePaul thinks he's good at keeping secrets, especially from Aristide Makricosta. They suit each other: Aristide turns a blind eye to Cyril's clandestine affairs, and Cyril keeps his lover's moonlighting job as a smuggler under wraps. Cyril participates in a mission that leads to disastrous results, leaving smoke from various political fires smoldering throughout the city. Shielding Aristide from the expected fallout isn't easy, though.
-
-
good story, terrible voices
- By Josh on 04-29-17
-
Cover Her Face
- By: P. D. James
- Narrated by: Penelope Dellaporta
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James' electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.
-
-
OK but...
- By NoelleJ on 11-14-14
By: P. D. James
-
A Woman in Berlin
- Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
- By: Anonymous, Philip Boehm - translator
- Narrated by: Isabel Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject—the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
-
-
Interesting
- By northwoods woman on 06-25-20
By: Anonymous, and others
-
Nocturne
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF.
-
-
Blech
- By Caroline H. on 02-20-11
By: Diane Armstrong
-
The Seventh Function of Language
- By: Laurent Binet, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1980. The literary critic Roland Barthes dies - struck by a laundry van - after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn't an accident at all? What if Barthes was murdered?
-
-
Outstanding reader! Excellent choice of victim(s).
- By William on 11-01-17
By: Laurent Binet, and others
What listeners say about The Stalin Epigram
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- brian
- 08-03-17
A truly tragic story, from a great author.
What did you love best about The Stalin Epigram?
How it felt like a historical fiction novel.
What other book might you compare The Stalin Epigram to and why?
As good as Young Philby, one of Littell's other books in my library.
Have you listened to any of John Lee and Anne Flosnik ’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I had listened to several of John Lee's one of his best, even if he kept his British accent, when he does different accents for most of his narrations. The woman, I hadn't heard before, but she was rather good as well.
If you could rename The Stalin Epigram, what would you call it?
The Deadly Verses.
Any additional comments?
A must-have for any fans of Robert Littell.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ATM
- 10-08-14
An authentic work of Art
I bought this book in the hope to get a feel of how it was like to be living in Moscow during the Great Purge. Never had I hoped to find such a gem.
Reading 'The Stalin Epigram' over the course of three or four weeks, slowly, savouring it, was on of those experiences that left a mark in my mind and in my soul. It cristallized my understanding of the Soviet dream and how it skidded out of control under Stalin's regime. The sights, the sounds, the smells and, above all, the fear of this era are beautifully and intelligently put down on paper often with a disconcerting economy of words. It left me convinced the author is portraying the truth (or as close as it gets) of what life in the Soviet Union was like during those dreadful, crazy times.
As the book revolves around the art of poetry, the narrative features many different instances where symbolism is delicately disguised and once I learned to look for it, I begun appreciating the novel in a whole new different way. For this reason and many others, I know I will read it again, which is something I try to do as little as I can (since there are too many books and life it too short). I know to look for things I have missed the first time.
This is a sad, sad story. However it must be told to the whole world that this happened. I applaud and I thank Mr. Littell for his powerful yet humble effort at portraying the life of the poet Mandelstam who, like 20 million other intellectuals, workers, peasants, bureaucrats, children, elderly etc. became crushed under Stalin's fist.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- G. Sabin
- 11-27-09
Starts slow but ultimately gratifying
This rather incredible book takes a while to show its exceptional stripes. The multiple narrators and multiple story lines are perfectly fitting but a bit confusing at first. This book is one in a long line of fascinating stories about the horrible time of the Stalinist purges. Totally rewarding.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- BrianB
- 08-03-11
A reaction, not a review: Brilliant
This is deeply moving, exquisitely told story. There is not one wasted dab of paint in this masterpiece. I bought it in the hope of listening to something entertaining for long drives, and now I must have a hard copy of this book so that I can see this work executed on the page.
The Stalin Epigram is not a light entertainment - it's a profoundly imagined, zen-like work of a complex, flourishing mind. It succeeds on every level, from the description of the smallest detail through the development of the mundane ironies that spiral out of control to govern the lives of the characters. Every character is so beautifully delineated and examined. The pacing, the journeys that characters take in their own minds and through their fears and loves, is all first-rate. They live in a world in which one is tortured, humiliated and murdered for the tiniest, only imagined, offenses against the state. And that is in the best of times. As the Bolshevik revolution approaches the end of the 30s, absolute power has corrupted absolutely. Imagining how that feels, and what it looks like, and conveying the moods, the fears, the beats and moments of all of that to a western audience is a major accomplishment. And at the heart of this is a pure story of genuine love and sharing.
I reserve five stars for books that I would expect always, from now on, to come to mind as an especially rewarding work. The Stalin Epigram is one of them. I'm anxious now to see if any of Mr. Littell's earlier works approach the power and scope of this superb novel.
Also, the readings by John Lee and Anne Flosnik are flawless.
Bravo to Mr. Littell for this book and everyone involved with this wonderful recording.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John
- 01-11-15
Not a typical Littell book but still worth it
I just love the way Little writes. The story line is engaging though not like his typical fictional espionage type books. The narration is also top notch. I would not start listening to Littell with this book but if you like Littell's writing style you will like this one.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darwin8u
- 07-12-14
An Espionage Artist Smuggling Art into his Oeuvre
'The Stalin Epigram' is unlike any Littell novel I've read. It is sad, beautiful, complex. It is a writer not playing with words to earn a living, or to impress, or to get laid, or to sell one stupid book. It is a lonely poet casting a stone into a cave, writing a love note to a dead lover, or telling Stalin to take a flying leap. It is art and art is always a little mad.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
16 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Lanlady
- 07-10-09
what was the point of this book?
There have been many outstanding narratives and histories about the tragic destiny of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, including his wife's first-rate memoir, Hope Abandoned. Stalin Epigram is not one of them. Robert Littell is singularly untalented when it comes to portraying real people and events, and tends to compensate by loading his fictionalized histories (such as The Company) with gossipy sex stories and empty bravado--call it the men's locker room version of Cold War history. Plus, Littell has a maddening tendency to introduce characters and plot lines that go nowhere at all--it's as if his imagination runs out in the middle of each chapter. The research is equally shabby--the secret police were not called the KGB in 1934, and St. Petersburg was called Leningrad. This audiobook was a complete waste of a audible credit.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
15 people found this helpful