Tristram Shandy Audiobook By Laurence Sterne cover art

Tristram Shandy

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
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 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Tristram Shandy

By: Laurence Sterne
Narrated by: Anton Lesser
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $37.44

Buy for $37.44

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

Laurence Sterne’s most famous novel is a biting satire of literary conventions and contemporary 18th-century values. Renowned for its parody of established narrative techniques, Tristram Shandy is commonly regarded as the forerunner of avant-garde fiction. Tristram’s characteristic digressions on a whole range of unlikely subjects (including battle strategy and noses!) are endlessly surprising and make this one of Britain’s greatest comic achievements. A cast of strange characters populate this strangest of novels: gentle Uncle Toby, sarcastic Walter, and of course, the pompous, garrulous Tristram himself. This edition is read by Anton Lesser in a tour de force performance.

Please note: In print, Tristram Shandy is filled with visual, typographical, and compositing jokes - pages that are completely blank, pages that are completely black, misplaced chapters or chapters consisting only of their title, squiggly lines to indicate waving a stick, and much more besides. This audiobook tries in a variety of ways to match Sterne's invention with aural equivalents.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2009 Naxos Audiobooks Classics European Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literary History & Criticism World Literature Comedy Funny Witty Thought-Provoking
Innovative Satire • Hilarious Digressions • Brilliant Narration • Avant-garde Style • Timeless Humor
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
What a glorious ramble and rollicking good time. Tristram spends half of the book finally getting to the complications of his birth and name. Along the way, he gets diverted into stories of his Uncle Toby's war wound, Corporal Trim's brother, and the beliefs of his father, Doctor Slop and more. Another book that I wonder if the audiobook performance is what made the difference. Anton Lesser and the producers of this book made it come to life and put the humor in it.

Glorious digressions

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I gave it a one on story because that is what the author would have wanted.

wonderful!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A POEM IN WHICH IS A CELEBRATION BY NEGATION
or, a repartee on jeopardy.

If on a friend’s bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,

You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.
― Alexander Theroux*

I was (of course) destined to love this book. Just look at my love for/on Montaigne, Cervantes & Burton. J'adore big books full of absurdity and digressions and allusions. This is the ... THE ... grand-pappa of the modern novel; the paterfamilis of all things Shandy.

Looking into the black night after emerging with a book from my mother's womb, I dreamt of THIS book among the stars. Sterne's Tristram existed for me before I read it. It was like a song whose tune you hum in your head for years, before identifying the tune with an actual song. Tristram Shandy was playing in the background as I read Joyce, Nabokov, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Murakami, Pynchon, DFW, Rushdie, Woolf, etc. Hell, even Karl Marx loved this book.

But now, I find myself debating on whether I will be content with my Modern Library (Fokenflik intro and notes) version or if I need to go buy the Visual Edition or the Florida Edition. BTW, the NAXOS/Lesser audio version is amazing AMAZING, but you still want the text in front of you because part of Sterne's genius is SEEN not just heard.

IF this seems like an odd obsession after reading/finishing/listening to Tristram Shandy, perhaps (I am guessing) you haven't READ it. 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' just isn't one of those books you really escape from. I keep digressing back into the novel because you keep recognizing the novel in other novels and movies and people. I look at Mandelbrot sets and think THIS is Tristram Shandy with its digressions, repetitions, and spawn. I look at the endnotes of DFW and think, this IS a Shandian experiment. I look at Vonnegut's picture of an * a$$hole (pg 81) in 'BreakFast of Champions' and think: this is a Shandian experiment.

Sterne was postModern before postModern was cool. Reading Tristram Shandy is like discovering that someone in the 18th century had already built a working computer, but that all (all is not to minimize it, simply to localize ti) it did was spit out a long sequence of digressions (All your base are belong to us). Anyway, my wife informed me that she loved just watching me read/listen (so this is now a voyeur review) Sterne because I would spit, giggle, choke, and squirm every page. I would wiggle and twist as Sterne would allude to the classics and twist the logic and satirize everyone from Robert Burton to Jonathan Swift to William Warburton. I can't say this novel isn't appreciated. Those who have read it get it, but it isn't appreciated enough. I imagine it will be like discovering Frank Zappa in 250 years. A future me will be looking at old YouTube videos and will think GOD why didn't more people appreciate him?

* from 'The Lollipop Trollops and Other Poems'

Like discovering Frank Zappa in 250 years

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book was assigned to me for a class at my college. With the limited time to actually read and understand it, this audiobook was an unbelievably great help not just for getting all the reading done but to enhance my enjoyment of it. Lesser does a fantastic job of reading and hits on the humor just right. However, this isn't a book you can just listen too, you need the physical thing in front of you as well to fully understand and appreciate what Stern was doing. Reading Tristram Shandy is marathon, not a sprint, so be ready to be in it for the long haul. It is truly a good time though, so have fun with it.

A Great Help for a Great Story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Really lovely reading of an amazing and classic novel. Truly fist rate in all aspects.

Great

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I've tried reading this book several times... but the added vitality of a good reader has finally made it possible! yay!! Even so, for those who *only* listen to this book, you're missing some amazing moments - Sterne was literally centuries ahead of his times--he plays with typography adding a blank page to describe a woman's beauty, a scrawl to imitate the movement of a walking stick... / this is the original satire on English life, and, in spite of its length, is quite worthwhile.

made it!

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

Where does Tristram Shandy rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

There is no point in reviewing a literary classic like this. Most people who like language and who have some knowledge of 18th century English culture love this book.

Any additional comments?

The purpose of my review is to say that is a brilliant narration. Back in the Stone Age, I loved the now vanished narration of the late Wolfram Kandinsky, especially his reading of Conrad. I put Mr. Lesser's narration in that category, which is high praise indeed.

brilliant narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An astonishingly diverting book that is both silly and wise. Anton Lessor really shines in bringing Uncle Toby, Dr Slop and company to life, while the direction is equally deft.

completely charmed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Anton Lesser helps me a lot to understand this work! It is not enough to read only with my eyes, but I need the interpretation and vivid performance of a person who can capture the nuanced tone.

very good performance！

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I originally tried reading this in high school, and the whole thing seemed like an insane mess to me, not funny at all. It was somewhat over my head, let's say. Same thing happened with Gulliver's Travels for me. I hated the book for a long time because I read it too early. This is a brilliant book really, and alternates from being mildly funny, to annoying, to hilarious. The whole gag is that the author keeps procrastinating and never getting anywhere, and its similar in style of humor to anything that is funny at first, and becomes funny again if you keep the joke up. I started to giggle at times as I realized just how long nothing had happened! I wondered how anyone could keep up the delays and marvelled at the originality. However, this won't be for everyone, and the joke is a bit subtle for some maybe, who will just wonder, why on earth does anyone read this when there is no story and nothing happens?

Its very British. So if you do not like British humor, then avoid this. Not that all British humor is the same, but its not straight at you, wink and stamp the foot while the joke is told American style humor. So some will miss it. The narration is wonderful, and helps immensely from my experience trying to read this myself. He emphasizes often and has unique voices for each of the characters which helps quite a bit to prevent boredom and keep things straight and only towards the end did I begin to sigh and want it to wrap up. This might be one that is better paired with another book so you can alternate between them. I was listening at a typing job and always try to have several books going depending on mood, so I can flip flop. I now understand just why the book is considered a classic and in that regard am very happy to have purchased and tried it again. One of those books better as an audio. Funny.

Much better than the first time

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews