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The Porcupine by Julian Barnes
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The Porcupine

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Narrator Daniel Rigby

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Length 3 hours 41 minutes
Language English
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Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011


Stoyo Petkanov, the deposed Party leader of a former Soviet satellite country, is on trial. His adversary, the prosecutor general, stands for the new government's ideals and liberal certainties, and is attempting to ensare Petkanov with the dictator's own totalitarian laws. But Petkanov is not beaten yet. He has been given his chance to fight back and he takes it with a vengeance, to the increasing discomfort and surprise of those around him.

ยฉ Julian Barnes 1992 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Lรฉgion d'honneur.

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Reviews

Critics have overlooked his tenderness, underestimated his intelligence, and denied his wisdom... The Porcupine is a superbly accomplished novella A minor masterpiece of political satire: compelling, funny and frightening The Porcupine is a new indisputable proof of Mr Barnes's creative power, yet what really astonished me, the Prosecutor, was the amazing precision of the intellectual's view of a socialist dictator, which so accorded with Zhivkov's true character The neatness of the novel's structure is complemented by the rampageous energy of the characters for which it is the cage Expand reviews
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