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Germinal
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
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Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience and by the relentless investigations of the dogged Policeman, Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty.
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Great Book, Great Translation, 5 Great Narrators
- By Rain Wiegartner on 06-07-20
By: Christine Donougher, and others
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Blindness
- By: José Saramago
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.
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Surrealistic
- By Richard Pesavento on 10-04-08
By: José Saramago
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Winter Journey
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.
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Historical Story Marred by Unnecessary Fluff
- By Debbie on 11-30-15
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The Damnation Game
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
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Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II.
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Damned If You Do
- By Wag The Fox on 04-05-14
By: Clive Barker
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The Gods of Tango
- A Novel
- By: Carolina De Robertis
- Narrated by: Carolina De Robertis
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February 1913: seventeen-year-old Leda, carrying only a small trunk and her father's cherished violin, leaves her Italian village for a new home, and a new husband, in Argentina. Arriving in Buenos Aires, she discovers that he has been killed, but she remains: living in a tenement, without friends or family, on the brink of destitution. Still, she is seduced by the music that underscores life in the city: tango, born from lower-class immigrant voices, now the illicit, scandalous dance of brothels and cabarets.
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A rousing tale
- By Jean on 07-24-15
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The Irishman's Daughter
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
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Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.
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Wasted a credit
- By Emily Coonce on 05-26-19
By: V.S. Alexander
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A Woman in Berlin
- Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
- By: Anonymous, Philip Boehm - translator
- Narrated by: Isabel Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
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For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject—the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
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Interesting
- By northwoods woman on 06-25-20
By: Anonymous, and others
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Life and Death are Wearing Me Out
- By: Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt - translator
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
- Length: 24 hrs and 11 mins
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Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating narrative. The hero—or antihero—of Mo Yan’s new novel is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his benevolence to his peasants. His story is a deliriously unique journey and absolutely riveting tale that reveals the author’s love of a homeland beset by ills inevitable, political, and traditional.
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REINCARNATION
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 06-24-14
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The Mark of the Beast
- By: Rudyard Kipling
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When a carousing Englishman disgraces the consecrated effigy of Hanuman, a leprous "Silver Man" marks him with a hideous curse. The ensuing night brings new terrors to the house of the doomed man.
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Must listen again
- By uffdasuzanne on 10-06-17
By: Rudyard Kipling
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The War Girls
- By: V. S. Alexander
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It's not just a thousand miles that separates Hanna Majewski from her younger sister, Stefa. There is another gulf—between the traditional Jewish ways that Hanna chose to leave behind in Warsaw, and her new, independent life in London. But as autumn of 1940 draws near, Germany begins a savage aerial bombing campaign in England, killing and displacing tens of thousands. Hanna, who narrowly escapes death, is recruited as a spy in an undercover operation that sends her back to her war-torn homeland.
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Courageous Sisters
- By Sara on 08-10-22
By: V. S. Alexander
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Narrated to Perfection
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What listeners say about Germinal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-20-24
If Les Miserables was written by Tarantino
Romance, symbolism, copious amount of fucking and swearing and outright modern sensibilities that turn out to be timeless.
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- Raritan2002
- 01-20-18
Good reading of a great 19th Century novel
Would you listen to Germinal again? Why?
This is great novel that seems to be virtually unknown to American readers. It is both a vivid and convincing account of the everyday lives of miners, as told from within, and the tale of a heroic, doomed strike and a catastrophic mine disaster. Although it is quite long, it is beautifully written, full of complex and engaging characters, and carries the reader forward with great momentum. In this production, it is well read. Among other things, the reader handles the French names comfortably.
What other book might you compare Germinal to and why?
I can think of no 19th Century novel in English that is comparable. It delves more deeply into the texture of everyday lives of working class men and women then anything by Dickens and with fewer illusions. It treats sex, both good sex and bad sex, simply as another fact of the lives of the characters without either euphemisms (other than those used by characters themselves) or prurience. There are no artificial happy endings, but the novel is not dreary.
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4 people found this helpful
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- HotBob
- 12-30-16
Deeply moving and dramatic tale read by a phenomenal narrator
A wonderfully narrated version of Zola's intense political and personal drama about French miners, the mine owners and a growing workers' revolution.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Simon Brodie
- 08-06-18
Excellent reading of a French classic
This has been a favorite novel for many years. I have read it at least three times, and am now enjoying an excellent rendition by Leighton Pugh (as is true of most Naxos audiobooks, the production is first class). The story centers around the plight of the working class (here, coal miners) of northern France in the second half of the nineteenth century. Zola details their squalid living conditions, inadequate pay, and dangerous work. But the book is not propaganda. Although the owners tend to be selfish, smug, and lacking insight into the workers’ inescapable poverty under the capitalism of that time, Zola never demonizes them. Neither are the workers’ faults ignored. Love, violence, revenge, and sabotage all come into play. The book is probably the best-known and certainly one of the best of the 20-volume Rougon-Macquart series.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Gerry
- 08-16-21
A stark comparison
I wish now that I listened to this book when I purchased it years ago. This book is not to be missed.
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- Candida Dixon
- 12-18-23
Vivid story
Wonderfully depicted gritty long suffering (fictional)individuals tell story of Workers of the world unite and foretell the Russian revolution of 1917
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- Rory J. Coriell
- 04-30-18
Outstanding Narration and Content
It has been a long time since I enjoyed a story as much as this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Katie Sullivan
- 10-12-15
well performed
this is a masterful performance of Zola's utterly depressing tale of the plight of French coal miners in the Second empire. Best audiobook I've ever read.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Greg G.
- 03-02-23
Incredible Novel—WOW!
This was my first Zola novel and its one of the best books I ever read/listened to. But be warned, it is also hands down the darkest, bleakest novel I ever read! Loved it!
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Story
- DFK
- 02-02-24
Important literature, but not all aspects
I highly respect Emile Zola, particularly because of his public defense of Dreyfus. I saw a French TV series (with subtitles) of this book before I listened to it, and was sure that the TV series must have made more of the love triangles, the sexuality, etc than the book did, because, well, TV and how sex sells. Well, I was wrong. Even for Zola sex sold. I truly appreciate literature that depicts the condition of the working class, demonstrating the need for unions, workers’ rights, fair pay, and control on the compensation of the wealthy. This book measures up for all of this (it is in many ways similar to King Coal by Upton Sinclair). It does it with a good story. However, I found the depiction of the constant sexual activity of the characters, even in conditions so that people are at the point of death, too much. Yes, I know that people do have sexual relations in awful situations, in concentration camps, in prison ships, etc. But there was too much of it in the story, and the love triangle (if you can call it love and not a lust triangle) is too dominant a part of the plot. Following my listening to this book, I looked at some academic essays (and a thesis) discussing this aspect of the book. Some call it realism. I don’t know. There is also constant drinking, which is probably a sad comment on how too many people in the working classes, even today, spend their hard-earned money. The contrast of the bourgeoisie with the working class is well-done, but there, too, there is an affair that even adds less to the story. I find Zola’s focus on women’s overworked, overused body parts - their hanging breasts, sagging bellies, large bottoms, kind of offensive, as if he has an ideal image of what women should look like, while I don’t recall any depiction of this sort of the men. Sure, the older ones were bent over, but what about their beer bellies? Then, perhaps it is the translation, so that there weren’t enough different phrases, but too many times there are expressions like “better to lie down and die”. OK, I get the point. Or something with be “done with”. Maybe there are more varied phrases in French. It seemed repetitive. The narration is decent, but not fantastic. It’s been a number of years since I listened to King Coal, and I know that Upton Sinclair could very well have been influenced by Zola’s work, but I think I’d say that if you want to listen to one book to be inspired to support the unions, go with Upton Sinclair. Or, read both and compare.
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