Altmann's Tongue
Stories and a Novella
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Altmann's Tongue
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Narrated by:
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Neil Shah
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By:
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Brian Evenson
About this listen
Evenson's first collection of 25 short stories and one novella, Altmann's Tongue (1994), garnered comparisons to Paul Bowles, Poe, and Kafka and is considered by many an existential masterpiece.
Chilling and severe, these stories reveal humans struggling with the brutality of the world and with one another, and trying to talk their way out of their own helplessness and fear.
In Evenson's world, moral and social categories dissolve and mutate, and our own understanding of our relationship to reality itself seems increasingly vexed and contingent. A father buries his daughter without telling his wife that she has died. A man commits two murders, one justified, the other not, and then undergoes a startling transformation. A detective wanders through a case, becoming further and further estranged from even the possibility of truth.
"Showing off Evenson's myriad skills, the stories range from rural tales of death to a retelling of the biblical Job story, in which a skeletonized Job trades barbs and blows with a murderous lumberjack.... There is a detached brutality to the collection, similar to Beckett's novels, which, due to Evenson's precise control over language, is both disturbing and compelling." (Review of Contemporary Fiction)
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4 out of 5 stars
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Needs to come with a warning label, a retch bucket and a lap to cry on.
- By Darwin8u on 09-04-23
By: Brian Evenson
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Last Days
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Chris Patton
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 250
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 224
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Story4 out of 5 stars 226
Still reeling from a brutal dismemberment, detective Kline is forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside a religious cult that takes literally the New Testament idea that you should cut off your hand if it offends you. Armed only with his gun, his wits, and a gift for self-preservation, Kline must navigate a gauntlet of lies, threats, and misinformation. All too soon he discovers that the stakes are higher than he thought and that his survival depends on an act of sheer will.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Red Harvest for the 21st Century
- By Joe Kraus on 10-04-17
By: Brian Evenson
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Fugue State
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 10
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Story4 out of 5 stars 10
Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Maybe I just didn't get it?
- By Zach Hafner on 05-03-24
By: Brian Evenson
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Song for the Unravelling of the World
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Mauro Hantman
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
A newborn’s absent face appears on the back of someone else’s head, a filmmaker goes to gruesome lengths to achieve the silence he’s after for his final scene, and a therapist begins, impossibly, to appear in a troubled patient's room late at night. In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception. Here, self-deception is a means of justifying our most inhuman impulses—whether we know it or not.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting in a different way...
- By Fishwich on 12-29-24
By: Brian Evenson
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The Ceremonies
- By: T. E. D. Klein
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 21 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 540
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 489
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Story4 out of 5 stars 488
For graduate student Jeremy Freirs, citified, cynical, yet prone to daydreams, summer is the time to shed a few pounds and finally get some reading done for a course on Gothic literature. He's picked just the right place: the small, secluded village of Gilead, New Jersey, only 90 minutes from Manhattan but, with its antique customs and clannish traditions, seemingly centuries away. For farmers Sarr and Deborah Poroth, young members of Gilead's fundamentalist community, the summer threatens a conflict between their passionate natures and the stern dictates of their faith.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Let the ceremonies begin...
- By writing.reader on 06-19-19
By: T. E. D. Klein
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The Warren
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
X doesn’t have a name. He thought he had one—or many—but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X. He’s also not as human as he believes himself to be. But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very good
- By Amazon Customer on 12-01-22
By: Brian Evenson
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Howls from the Dark Ages
- An Anthology of Medieval Horror
- By: Christopher Buehlman, Brian Evenson, Hailey Piper, and others
- Narrated by: Full Cast
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Uncover the secret annals of untold history in these eighteen medieval manuscripts. Each tortured scribe will bring you face to face with ancient horrors lurking in cursed castles, wild woodlands, haunted hamlets, and mysterious monasteries. Including a lineup of authors both established and emerging, HOWL Society Press presents the first-ever anthology of historical horror from the medieval period, fittingly introduced by the writer who arguably started it all: Christopher Buehlman, author of the medieval horror epic Between Two Fires.
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4 out of 5 stars
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if you like buehlman or between two fires...
- By RCC on 11-13-22
By: Christopher Buehlman, and others
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Immobility
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Mauro Hantman
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 686
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 627
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Story4 out of 5 stars 625
You open your eyes for what you know is not the first time and you remember nothing. You find out that a catastrophic event known as the Kollaps has destroyed life as we know it. Something crucial has been stolen - but under no circumstances can you know what or why. You’ve got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you’ve got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out. Paralyzed from the waist down, you’re being carried around on the backs of two men who don’t seem anything like you at all.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A paralyzing journey to survive
- By Garrard Hayes on 11-03-14
By: Brian Evenson
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The Unconsoled
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 271
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 235
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Story4 out of 5 stars 234
From the author of The Remains of the Day, here is a novel that is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Torturous trip to nowhere
- By Deborah on 06-30-18
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
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Hollow
- By: Brian Catling
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
Sheltering beneath Das Kagel, the cloud-scraping structure rumored to be the Tower of Babel, the sacred Monastery of the Eastern Gate descends into bedlam. Their ancient oracle, Quite Testiyont - whose prophesies helped protect the church - has died, leaving the monks vulnerable to the war raging between the living and the dead. Tasked by the High Church to deliver a new oracle, Barry Follett and his group of hired mercenaries are forced to confront wicked giants and dangerous sirens.
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4 out of 5 stars
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It’s just fine
- By Matt on 12-03-24
By: Brian Catling
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Pilgrim
- A Medieval Horror
- By: Mitchell Lüthi
- Narrated by: Alan Turton
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 159
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 159
Set in 12th-century Jerusalem, Pilgrim follows the treacherous journey of a German knight and his companions as they return home after seven arduous years battling for God in the Holy Land. Within this sprawling tale lies a tapestry of medieval horror, intertwining history and folklore, encompassing both a metaphysical and literal odyssey.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An even greater story than I had hoped for
- By RandyMarsh on 09-13-24
By: Mitchell Lüthi
What listeners say about Altmann's Tongue
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Scott Rees Ferrin
- 07-19-22
Hard to describe
This book is violent and transgressive. The language is chosen very carefully and minimalistic in style. Evenson is one of my favorite authors and the performer does the work justice without over acting too much. Listen and open your mind.
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