The Waste Land Audiobook By T. S. Eliot cover art

The Waste Land

Preview
Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Waste Land

By: T. S. Eliot
Narrated by: Jon Waters
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $8.57

Buy for $8.57

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

The Waste Land is a seminal work of modernist poetry by T.S. Eliot. Written in 1922, this five-part poem is a portrait of its time, a work that expresses the disillusionment of the modernist era and the desperation that the generation of writers of that time was feeling. This poem comes from the area just after the First World War, an era in which the world was in disarray. Many young men had lost their lives or livelihoods from the war, families were torn apart, and the survivors were aimless and disoriented at how to move on. This was the era of literary greats like Ezra Pound, F. Scott. Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and of course, T. S. Eliot. The artists of this time turned to poetry and literature as a way of expressing the widespread spirit of wandering their generation had come to embody. The Waste Land's alternating narrators, character vignettes, references to Eastern religions, and imagery of chaos and disillusionment all come together to create an impactful and insightful work of art. This poem exemplifies a generation of artists and is a masterful work from a great artist at his peak.

Public Domain (P)2021 Spotify Audiobooks
European Poetry United States World Literature
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_T1_webcro805_stickypopup
All stars
Most relevant  
There are far better readings available. Alec Guinness reading The Waste Land is available on You Tube for free and is vastly superior.

Just don’t

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

By all accounts this is a masterpiece...I found it hard to stay awake and now have a headache.😔

Puzzling Erudite

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

As important as it was 100 years ago. Perhaps even more so now given the challenges we face.

Relevant

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The narrator’s tone drips with anger, disgust and contempt towards everything at once and nothing in particular. I’ve read this poem for 45 years and heard T. S. Eliot’s recorded recitation. This is a disappointing offering from Audible.

Best Poem, Worst Narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

No sense of the text. A superficial reading without
nuance. Terrible German, French, Italian, and Latin.

Cardboard

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I love the poem, but the narrator's over-wrought performance is just way too over the top.

Very Dramatic Reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The poem is wonderful; the reading is awful. It’s like the reader didn’t understand what he was reading.

Bad inflection.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This title is priced too high for the quality of this reading. Three more words.

Much better available, even free on YouTube

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.