AuthorZadie Smith
NarratorZadie Smith
Duration6h 5m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Short Stories
PublisherPenguin Books Ltd
VersionUnabridged
In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north west London lives the last day of his life, unknowingly caught in someone else's story of hate and division, resistance and revolt. A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart - and other parts of the human body - considering the ways in which desire is always an act of negotiation, destruction, and self-invention. A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move forward into a future that holds no place for him. Moral panic spreads like contagion through the upper echelons of New York City - and the cancelled people look disconcertingly like the rest of us. A teenage scion of the technocratic elite chases spectres through a premium virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny nose and no surviving family. We all take a much-needed break from this mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is ceaselessly replenished, while political and environmental collapse happen far away, to someone else. Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.
Author: Zadie Smith
Author Zadie Smith
Narrator Zadie Smith
Duration 55m
Revisiting the terrain of her acclaimed novel NW, The Embassy of Cambodia is another remarkable work of fiction from Zadie Smith. 'The fact is, if we followed the history of every little country in the world - in its dramatic as well as its quiet times - we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or apply ourselves to our necessary...
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
Author: Hilary Mantel
Author Hilary Mantel
Narrator Jane Carr
Duration 4h 30m
In these ten bracingly subversive tales, all of Hilary Mantel's gifts of characterisation and observation are fully engaged. Childhood cruelty is played out behind the bushes in 'Comma'; nurses clash in 'Harley Street' over something more than professional differences. Whether set in a claustrophobic Saudi Arabian flat or on a precarious mountain r...
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Author: Roald Dahl
Author Roald Dahl
Narrator Murphy Cillian
Duration 55m
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Katina by Roald Dahl, read by Cillian Murphy. In Katina, Roald Dahl tells of a young Greek girl fascinated by the British planes and airbase that have come to her village. Katina is taken from the short story collection Over to You, which includes nine other dramatic and terrifying tales of life as a wartim...
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Author: Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Various
Author Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Various
Narrator Various
Duration 6h 17m
This collection comprises the best of classic horror writing, with the atmospheric genius of Edgar Allen Poe, the invention and eeriness of Bram Stoker, and the suspense of Wilkie Collins amongst the terrifying gems contained. A veritable schooling in the origins of modern-day horror and fantasy, some of the best minds in the history of English lit...
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Author: F Scott Fitzgerald
Author F Scott Fitzgerald
Narrator Kerry Shale
Duration 11m
A popular story in the acclaimed 'Pat Hobby' series. Poor Pat Hobby's fates go from bad to worse when he gets the wrong impression of a heated situation. Amusing and delightfully cringeworthy at times, Pat Hobby is a stubborn anti-hero who you won't be able to resist.
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Author: Zadie Smith
Author Zadie Smith
Narrator Peter Francis James
Duration 18h 48m
Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?Set between New England and London, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions a...
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Author: Zadie Smith
Author Zadie Smith
Narrator Pippa Bennett-Warner
Duration 13h 50m
An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from north west London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty. Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly...
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Author: Jenny Eclair
Author Jenny Eclair
Narrator Rachel Atkins
Duration 6h 44m
In this addictive short story collection, twenty-four very different women reach a pivotal moment in their lives. A widow is liberated by a new job, but keeps it secret from her family. A date in suburbia has dramatic results. A seamstress takes revenge on an unsuspecting customer, while in France, a mother is promised 'fantastic news' - and lets h...
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Author: Zadie Smith
Author Zadie Smith
Narrator Ben Barnes
Duration 12h 2m
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith, read by Ben Barnes. Zadie Smith's deeply funny, subversive and splendidly entertaining The Autograph Man is a whirlwind tour of celebrity and our fame-obsessed times. Following one Alex-Li Tandem - a twenty-something, Chinese-Jewish autograph dealer turned on by sex, drugs...
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Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Author Edgar Allan Poe
Narrator Richard Griffiths
Duration 25m
Be cruel to animals at your peril - this story extols the virtues of being kind to all creatures to achieve happiness in life, a lesson that our unhappy protagonist is far from learning, whether in regards to human or animal life. A shocking story told with a dry dark humor, this tale is to be heard to be believed and is a true classic from the mas...
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