AuthorLeo Tolstoy
NarratorJonathan Oliver
Duration3h 55m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
PublisherW.F. Howes
VersionUnabridged
One of Tolstoy's most important shorter works, The Kreutzer Sonata presents a problematic view of the relationship between the sexes and promotes abstinence as the solution. Pozdnyshev jealously observes the intimacy that emerges between his wife and a violin player. Haunted by 'The Kreutzer Sonata' over which they bonded; it plays round and round in Pozdnyshev's head driving him to distraction and to an unquenchable rage. The Kreutzer Sonata is a psychologically fascinating novella, offering interesting insights into the power play between the sexes.
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Author Leo Tolstoy
Narrator Edward Petherbridge
Duration 4h 47m
Set against the epic backdrop of the Napoleonic wars and inspired by Tolstoy's own family history, War and Peace is expertly interpreted by Edward Petherbridge who brilliantly defines the varied and different characters that people this celebrated classic.
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Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Narrator Richard E. Grant
Duration 2h 12m
He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world since his story first appeared in 1943, written down by an aristocratic French aviator who soon after disappeared during a flight acr...
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Author: Kenneth Grahame
Author Kenneth Grahame
Narrator Alan Bennett
Duration 1h 17m
When the Water Rat invites the unassuming Mole to spend his first day ever in a boat on the river, and wise Badger comes along for the ride as well, so begins a marvellous season of adventure for the three friends. Mr Toad (he of Toad Hall) completes a happy foursome, but his tendency to get into hot water leads him into some rather hair-raising sc...
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Leighton Pugh
Duration 19h 55m
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms it is visceral, graphic and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel...
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Author: Albert Camus
Author Albert Camus
Narrator James Jenner
Duration 11h 2m
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror bo...
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Traci Svensgaard
Duration 6h 41m
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Th‚rŠse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend, Laurent. But their passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime t...
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Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Narrator Various
Duration 1h 32m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Jessica Brown Findlay, Jamael Westman and Sheila Atim. 'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing' Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneer...
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Author: Leo Tolstoy
Author Leo Tolstoy
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 9h 38m
Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the stellar cast of this landmark BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Leo Tolstoy's epic saga. 'Tolstoy's imagined world is recreated on air brilliantly by the extraordinary cast' The Spectator One of the greatest novels of all time, War and Peace explores historical, social, ethical...
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Author: Leo Tolstoy
Author Leo Tolstoy
Narrator Diana Quick
Duration 2h 24m
Anna Karenina risks her lifestyle and wealth when she falls for the wrong man in this dramatic and romantic tale of choices and consequences. Married to a man of importance in 19th century St.Petersburg, Anna 's world crumbles when she falls passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky, and is forced to choose between her lover and her you...
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Author: Charlotte Bronte
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Charlotte Ritchie
Duration 21h 29m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding sch...
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