An Honourable Exit
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An Honourable Exit
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Narrated by:
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Leighton Pugh
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By:
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Eric Vuillard
About this listen
From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism.
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023
'Excoriating and profound . . . A remarkable work' - Scotsman
'Absolutely spectacular' - France Info
19 October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option – a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants – but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found.
In this gripping and shocking novel, Éric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians, bankers and titans of industry who all had a vested interest in France’s prolonged presence in lands far from Paris. Skilfully skewering the guilty, Vuillard shows us how key players in conflicts throughout history often have a motivation even deeper and darker than nationalism and political ideology – greed. As well as bringing scenes from the battlefields to life, Vuillard looks beyond this visceral reality on the ground to the cold calculations of the boardroom elite with the power to turn a military win or loss into their financial gain.
Short, sharp and brutal, An Honourable Exit is a journey behind closed doors to witness how history is really made.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
February 20, 1933: on an unremarkable day during a harsh Berlin winter, a meeting of twenty-four German captains of industry and senior Nazi dignitaries is being held in secret in the plush lounges of the Reichstag. They are there to "stump up" funding for the accession to power of the National Socialist Party and its fearsome Chancellor. This inaugural scene sets the tone of consent which will lead to the worst possible repercussions.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Dramatized reading of a moment in history
- By George on 10-29-18
By: Éric Vuillard, and others
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The Centurions
- By: Jean Larteguy, Robert D. Kaplan - foreward
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
When The Centurions was first published in 1960, readers were riveted by the thrilling account of soldiers fighting for survival in hostile environments. They were equally transfixed by the chilling moral question the novel posed: how to fight when the "age of heroics is over". As relevant today as it was half a century ago, The Centurions is a gripping military adventure, an extended symposium on waging war in a new global order, and an essential investigation of the ethics of counterinsurgency.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superbly read. Unbelievably timely
- By Benjamin on 05-05-21
By: Jean Larteguy, and others
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Places and Names
- On War, Revolution, and Returning
- By: Elliot Ackerman
- Narrated by: Elliot Ackerman, Mark Deakins
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
Toward the beginning of Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman sits in a refugee camp in Turkey, across the table from a man named Abu Hassar, who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq, and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to be a journalist, but after establishing a rapport with Abu Hassar, he takes a risk by revealing to him that in fact he was a Marine special operation officer. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary quickly joins him in the game of filling in the map.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A crazy ride through the Mideast.
- By Kent Prochazka on 12-05-19
By: Elliot Ackerman
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The Fracture Zone
- A Return to the Balkans
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 110
Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. Unrest in the Balkans has gone on for centuries. A seasoned reporter, Winchester visited the region twenty years ago. When Kosovo reached crisis level in 1997, Winchester thought a return visit to the beleaguered area would help to make sense out of the awful violence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved this-Great combo:Story and History Explained
- By Jeremy on 07-10-14
By: Simon Winchester
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Darkness at Noon
- By: Arthur Koestler
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 856
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 750
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 742
A fictional portrayal of an aging revolutionary, this novel is a powerful commentary on the nightmare politics of the troubled 20th century. Born in Hungary in 1905, a defector from the Communist Party in 1938, and then arrested in both Spain and France for his political views, Arthur Koestler writes from a wealth of personal experience.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Literature as the ‘living memory’ of nations
- By ESK on 01-23-13
By: Arthur Koestler
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"Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself"
- The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945
- By: Florian Huber
- Narrated by: Sam Peter Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was underway. As the Red Army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of its soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but disgrace and despair. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death - for themselves and for their children.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book should be required reading for anyone that seeks to understand how ordinary people could be transformed into monsters.
- By Anonymous User on 05-08-20
By: Florian Huber
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Thunder at Twilight
- Vienna 1913/1914
- By: Frederic Morton
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived in Vienna on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here, Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph - and soon the bullet that killed the archduke would set off the Great War that would kill 10 million more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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great era great book great narrator
- By John on 03-18-16
By: Frederic Morton
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HHhH
- By: Laurent Binet
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible-until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service-killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Himlers Hirn heisst Heydrich
- By Darwin8u on 02-02-13
By: Laurent Binet
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story5 out of 5 stars 119
In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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Eichmann in My Hands
- A First-Person Account by the Israeli Agent Who Captured Hitler's Chief Executioner
- By: Peter Z. Malkin, Harry Stein
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story5 out of 5 stars 74
In 1960 Argentina, a covert team of Israeli agents hunted down the most elusive war criminal alive: Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust. The young spy who tackled Eichmann on a Buenos Aires street - and fought every compulsion to strangle the Obersturmführer then and there - was Peter Z. Malkin. For decades Malkin's identity as Eichmann's captor was kept secret. Here he reveals the entire breathtaking story - from the genesis of the top-secret surveillance operation to the dramatic public capture and smuggling of Eichmann to Israel to stand trial.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent the first person account
- By Barrett Francescatti on 02-09-22
By: Peter Z. Malkin, and others
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The Collaborator
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
It is 1944 in Budapest, and the Germans have invaded. Miklos Nagy risks his life and confronts the dreaded Adolf Eichmann in an attempt save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the death camps. But no one could have foreseen the consequences.... It is 2005 in Sydney, and Annika Barnett sets out on a journey that takes her to Budapest and Tel Aviv to discover the truth about the mysterious man who rescued her grandmother in 1944.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ruined by the reader
- By Hayworth on 02-24-20
By: Diane Armstrong
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Burr
- A Novel (Narratives of Empire, Book 1)
- By: Gore Vidal
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 21 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 940
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 804
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 804
Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally! Vidal's Great Take on the Life of Burr
- By John Norton on 06-12-19
By: Gore Vidal
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Armageddon
- A Novel of Berlin
- By: Leon Uris
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat
- Length: 24 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
At the end of World War II, American army officer Captain Sean O’Sullivan is commissioned with rebuilding Berlin. Reeling from the death of his brothers at German hands and faced with the direct horrors of the Holocaust, O’Sullivan struggles against his animosity towards the nation he is helping restore. Meanwhile, Soviet forces blockade Germany in a bid for power, and the Western Allies must unite to prevent a communist takeover. When the airlift begins, the Allies find their deepest convictions tested as they fight against a threat even more dangerous than Hitler.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Legendary author
- By Robert ONeill on 02-13-19
By: Leon Uris
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House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
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The Note Through the Wire
- The Incredible True Story of a Prisoner of War and a Resistance Heroine
- By: Doug Gold
- Narrated by: Conrad Coleby
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. One an underground resistance fighter, a bold young woman determined to vanquish the enemy occupiers; the other a prisoner of war, a man longing to escape the confines of the camp so he can battle again. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers, slipped through the wire of the compound, and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Such devotion
- By smilin29 on 01-01-24
By: Doug Gold
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Freedom at Midnight
- By: Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 22 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
This is the story of the eclipse of the British Raj and the birth of an independent India and Pakistan. The fabled India of the maharajas, with their palaces and harems, their gold-caparisoned elephants and their glittering private armies—the India of Kipling’s legendary army, with its young British officers commanding troops of a dozen races, religions, and castes—the India of tiger hunts and pigsticking.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Awful - Need for diversity
- By RNS on 02-01-20
By: Dominique Lapierre, and others
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Night Draws Near
- Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
- By: Anthony Shadid
- Narrated by: Anthony Shadid
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Determined to offer an unfiltered version of events, the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid was neither embedded with soldiers nor briefed by politicians. Because he is fluent in Arabic, Shadid, an Arab-American born and raised in Oklahoma, was able to actually disappear into the divided, dangerous worlds of Iraq. Day by day, as American dreams clashed with Arab notions of justice, he pieced together the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the terrible dislocations and tragedies of war.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Too little, too late
- By Kindle Customer on 03-23-09
By: Anthony Shadid
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In Pharaoh's Army
- Memories of the Lost War
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
Whether he is evoking the blind carnage of the Tet offensive, the theatrics of his fellow Americans, or the unraveling of his own illusions, Wolff brings to this work the same uncanny eye for detail, pitiless candor, and mordant wit that made This Boy's Life a modern classic.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Boring Waste of Time
- By Ethan on 08-21-22
By: Tobias Wolff