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Narrator
Geoffrey Howard
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Length
31 hours 47 minutes
Language
English
In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century. The result is a daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.
Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional: a young German who joins the SS to reveal its secrets and stop its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons and with different results, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich laboring under Stalinist oppression. This last story is perhaps Vollmann's signature accomplishment in this volume. Also explored are the fates of artists and poets ranging from Käthe Kollwitz and Anna Akhmatova to Marina Tsvetaeva and Van Cliburn.
William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including Whores for Gloria, The Royal Family, and Europe Central, which won the National Book Award. He has also written four collections of stories (including The Rainbow Stories and The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction), a memoir, and eight works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in California.
Geoffrey Howard (a.k.a. Ralph Cosham) (1936–2014) was a British journalist who changed careers to become a narrator and screen and stage actor. He performed in more than one hundred professional theatrical roles. His audiobook narrations were named “Audio Best of the Year” by Publishers Weekly, and he won seven AudioFile Earphones Awards, and in 2013 he won the coveted Audie Award for Best Mystery Narration for his reading of Louise Penny’s The Beautiful Mystery.
Reviews
“Few American writers infuse their writing with similar urgency.”
“[A] nuanced reading…[Cosham has] a voice that is both intimate and distant, which he uses to excellent effect…stunning and otherworldly…atmospheric.”
“Vollmann opens new portals onto a genocidal war never to be forgotten and illuminates both the misery and beauty human beings engender.”
“Europe Central may be his best novel ever.”
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