Classics audiobooks

Beware of Pity

By: Stefan Zweig

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner.

There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard.

Beware of... Read more

Four Arthurian Romances

By: Chrétien de Troyes

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Length: 16 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

The Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes form the wellspring of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Stories of knightly valour in the Welsh Marches had existed before the 12th century, but it was the magnificent poetry and imagination of Chrétien, the 12th century French poet and trouvère, which brought alive the... Read more

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

By: Rainer Maria Rilke

Narrated by: Jamie Parker

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

This remarkable book is the only novel by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the greatest German-language poet of his time. It is, in a sense, a true curiosity - dark and intense - and possesses, not surprisingly, strong elements of autobiography.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has even been... Read more

Daphnis and Chloe

By: Longus

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Length: 2 hours 47 minutes

Abridged: No

Daphnis and Chloe is one of the most engaging and gently erotic stories to emerge from the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome. It is a pastoral tale, telling of a boy and a girl, both abandoned (but separately) as babies on nearby hillsides; one becomes a goatherd, the other a shepherdess, and a mutual attraction arises as they move from... Read more

The Provincial Lady in America

By: E. M. Delafield

Narrated by: Georgina Sutton

Length: 4 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings. She was particularly amazed because, having received an overture sometime before and feeling that she would rather stay in the English countryside, she... Read more

The Provincial Lady in Wartime

By: E. M. Delafield

Narrated by: Georgina Sutton

Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest.

No further ‘Diaries' had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of... Read more

Oblomov

By: Ivan Goncharov

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Length: 20 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Oblomov is one of the most distinctive characters in Russian literature - within a short time following its publication in 1859, the novel spawned its own saying: ‘Oblomovism'! From the pen of Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891) emerged a portrait of a young man, Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov, who represented a figure well known in prerevolutionary Russia at the... Read more

Between the Acts

By: Virginia Woolf

Narrated by: Georgina Sutton

Length: 5 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf's last novel, was finished in November 1940 and shortly afterwards delivered to her publisher Hogarth Press. The following March she committed suicide.

Between the Acts is often an overlooked work in her oeuvre because she did express her intention to revise it before publication, though in the event this never... Read more

The Magic Mountain

By: Thomas Mann

Narrated by: David Rintoul

Length: 37 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

It was The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) that confirmed Thomas Mann as a Nobel prizewinner for literature and rightly so, for it is undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 20th century.

Its unusual story - it opens with a young man visiting a friend in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps - was originally started by Mann in 1912 but... Read more

Perceval

By: Chrétien de Troyes

Narrated by: Mike Rogers

Length: 16 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval is the single most important Arthurian romance. It contains the very first mention of the mysterious grail, later to become the Holy Grail and the focal point of the spiritual quest of the knights of Arthur's court.

Chrétien left the poem unfinished, but the extraordinary and intriguing theme of the Grail was too... Read more

Crimen y castigo [Crime and Punishment]

By: Fiódor Dostoievski

Narrated by: Joan Mora

Length: 19 hours

Abridged: No

Fiódor Dostoievski (1821-1881) escribió su obra maestra Crimen y castigo - que se publicó por primera vez en 1866 - después de haber pasado cuatro años de su vida en una prisión estatal en Siberia. Ingeniero de formación, inicialmente había sido condenado a muerte por conspiración contra el zar, tras ser detenido en una reunión del círculo... Read more

Sartor Resartus

By: Thomas Carlyle

Narrated by: James Gillies

Length: 10 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Sartor Resartus is one of the most unusual, even quirky, British novels to emerge from the first half of the 19th century. Published in 1836, its varied heritage reflects the earlier eccentricities of Sterne and Swift, curiously mixed with influences from Goethe.

Its subject matter is strange: it concerns a book called Clothes: Their Origin and... Read more

The Pillow Book

By: Sei Shonagon

Narrated by: Georgina Sutton

Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the closing years of the 10th century. Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthrals with its lively gossip, witty observations and subtle impressions.

Lady Shonagon was an erstwhile rival of Lady Murasaki, whose... Read more

The Man Without Qualities

By: Robert Musil

Narrated by: John Telfer

Length: 60 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities'... Read more

Elective Affinities

By: Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe

Narrated by: Jonathan Booth

Length: 8 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Goethe as a novelist is best known for two earlier novels, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796). But Elective Affinities, which was published in 1809, is widely regarded as his mature masterpiece, not least because of its unusual provenance, which brings together Goethe the scientist as well as Goethe... Read more

The Good Soldier Svejk

By: Jaroslav Hasek

Narrated by: David Horovitch

Length: 28 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

The Good Soldier Švejk, written shortly after the First World War, is one of the great antiwar satires - and one of the funniest books of the 20th (or any) century. In creating his eponymous hero, Jaroslav Hašek produced an unforgettable character who charms and infuriates and bamboozles his way through the conflagration that tore through the... Read more

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

By: Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Length: 22 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre was the original German title - was Goethe's second novel, published 1795-6, almost two decades after The Sorrows of Young Werther. It again focuses on a young man but this time on his growing understanding and maturity as he makes his way in the world. As such, it is regarded as the... Read more

The Old Man in the Corner

By: Baroness Orczy

Narrated by: Martyn Swain

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

An old man sits in the corner of a London tea house. In comes a young lady reporter, and a conversation ensues.

'Mysteries!' he comments. 'There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.' At first, the reporter wants to terminate the exchange, swiftly. But she... Read more

The Lays of Marie de France

By: Marie de France

Narrated by: David Rintoul & Georgina Sutton

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

The 12 Lays of Marie de France offer one of the most striking collections of short narrative poems of the 12th century - two centuries before Chaucer.

Written in Anglo-French, they contain beguiling and entertaining stories of love and romance, of chivalry and adventure with sometimes even a magical twist. They are especially unique in early... Read more

The Confusions of Young Master Törless

By: Robert Musil

Narrated by: Jamie Parker

Length: 6 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Robert Musil (1880-1942) is best known for his enduring masterpiece The Man Without Qualities, one of the great European works of the 20th century. It was with The Confusions of Young Master Törless first published in 1906, a challenging but very different work, that he signalled his extraordinary talent. As the nineteenth century draws to an... Read more

Отец Милон. Новеллы

By: Ги де Мопассан

Narrated by: Иван Забелин

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

В сборник произведений французского писателя Ги де Мопассана, опубликованный посмертно в 1889 году в издательстве Поля Оллендорфа, его редактора, которому писатель завещал право издания своих сочинений, вошли новеллы, написанные в 1882 году: «Отец Милон» (известный так же как «Дядюшка Милон» и «Папаша Милон»), «В весенний вечер», «Слепой»,... Read more

Сёстры Рондоли. Новеллы

By: Ги де Мопассан

Narrated by: Иван Забелин

Length: 4 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

В сборник произведений французского писателя Ги де Мопассана, опубликованный в 1884 году в издательстве Поля Оллендорфа, вошли новеллы: Сестры Рондоли, Хозяйка, Маленький бочонок, «Он», Мой дядя Состэн, Болезнь Андре, Проклятый хлеб, Дело госпожи Люно, Мудрец, Зонтик, Задвижка, Встреча, Самоубийства, Награждён орденом!, Шали,... Read more

Das Dschungelbuch (Hörbuch)

By: Rudyard Kipling

Narrated by: Sabine Schmitt

Length: 5 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Entdecke die zeitlose Magie von Rudyard Kiplings "Dschungelbuch" in dieser fesselnden Hörbuch-Ausgabe. Meisterhaft erzählt entführt dich die Geschichte von Mogli, dem Menschenjungen im Dschungel, in eine Welt voller Abenteuer und Freundschaften. Die lebendige Darstellung der charismatischen Figuren schafft ein beeindruckendes Hörerlebnis. Tauche... Read more

The Call Of The Wild

By: Jack London

Narrated by: Bruce Lieberman

Length: 2 hours 48 minutes

Abridged: No

The Call of the Wild is a novel by Jack London, first published in 1903. This thrilling adventure story is set in the Klondike Gold Rush of Alaska and the Yukon Territory, in the late 1890s. Dog sledding was the mode of transportation and strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel’s main character, Buck, is half St. Bernard and half Scotch... Read more