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Laughter in the Dark
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, Volume 1
- By: Anton Chekhov
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, (1860-1904), was born in Russia at Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. His name has become synonymous with a certain literary style much admired and widely copied since his death. Typically, a Chekhov story is a "mood", a state of mind, usually with regard to relations between one person and another. Under the influence of the constant, infinitesimal, and unforeseen pinpricks of life, there occurs a gradual transformation of that state of mind.
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A Box of Chocolates
- By Darlene on 02-08-05
By: Anton Chekhov
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Death in Cyprus
- A Novel
- By: M. M. Kaye
- Narrated by: Julia Farhat
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-year-old Amanda Derrington is on an extended cruise with her uncle when she decides to make a short trip to the sun-washed island of Cyprus. But even before the ship arrives in the port, there is a suspicious death. Once the passengers reach the island, it soon becomes clear that the death was in fact an act of murder. What Amanda had meant to be a pleasant excursion quickly takes a turn for the worse in this classic novel of suspense and romance by one of our most celebrated writers.
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I Just Love The Oldies!
- By Kathi on 06-02-14
By: M. M. Kaye
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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The Master and Margarita
- By: Mikhail Bulgakov
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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The Master and Margarita is one of the most famous and best-selling Russian novels of the 20th century, despite its surreal environment of talking cats, Satan and mysterious happenings. Naxos AudioBooks presents this careful abridgement of a new translation in an imaginative reading by the charismatic Julian Rhind-Tutt. With War and Peace and Crime and Punishment among the Naxos AudioBooks best-sellers, this too promises to be a front title.
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Very vivid and amazing writing style
- By Sina Beni on 05-04-22
By: Mikhail Bulgakov
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Blue Guitar
- A Novel
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: Gerry O'Brien
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and Ancient Light, a new novel - at once trenchant, witty, and shattering - about the intricacies of artistic creation and theft, and about the ways in which we learn to possess one another and to hold on to ourselves. Equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, our narrator, Oliver Otway Orme, is a painter of some renown and a petty thief who does not steal for profit and has never before been caught.
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Masterful
- By Amazon customer on 11-25-15
By: John Banville
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Life Class
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Russell Boulter
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him.
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In Love and War
- By Cariola on 07-28-09
By: Pat Barker
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Rebecca
- By: Daphne du Maurier
- Narrated by: Anna Massey
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.... The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives - presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
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Easily the best audiobook I have ever heard!
- By Kid at Heart on 11-10-18
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Madame Bovary
- By: Gustave Flaubert
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.
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Now Here's a Story
- By P. Giorgio on 09-06-03
By: Gustave Flaubert
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The Unseen
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Webb
- Narrated by: Clare Wille
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A vicar with a passion for nature, the Reverend Albert Canning leads a happy existence with his naive wife, Hester, in their sleepy Berkshire village in the year 1911. But as the English summer dawns, the Cannings' lives are forever changed by two new arrivals: Cat, their new maid, a disaffected, free-spirited young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the law; and Robin Durrant, a leading expert in the occult, enticed by tales of elemental beings in the water meadows nearby.
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Great book!
- By Dana on 09-03-12
By: Katherine Webb
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Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
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Life and chess are such lonely battles
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Bend Sinister
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The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America, and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.
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A fantastic fairytale of fascism
- By Darwin8u on 12-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Pale Fire
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A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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An amazing feat for such a unique novel
- By AmazonCustomer on 03-27-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Eye
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Nabokov’s fourth novel, The Eye, is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Smurov, a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigré living in pre-war Berlin, commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife as he searches for proof of his existence among fellow émigrés who are too distracted to pay him any heed.
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Ego vero, ergo sum
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By: Vladimir Nabokov
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King, Queen, Knave
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This novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing emporium. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the thin, awkward, myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle’s condescension in his aunt’s bed.
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A non-Euclidean German love triangle.
- By Darwin8u on 04-01-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Look at the Harlequins!
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As intricate as a house of mirrors, Nabokov’s last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899), whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, though the two are not to be confused (?).
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Peek, Memory!
- By Darwin8u on 09-11-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Mary
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In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of serio-comic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin’s, who, he discovers, is Mary’s husband....
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There IS something about Mary!
- By Darwin8u on 12-22-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Transparent Things
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" Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero - sullen, gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland.... As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride.... Eight years later - following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment - Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past...." (Martin Amis)
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Moments of absolute and immortal genius
- By Darwin8u on 10-15-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes “ I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.”
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A dry run at big, complex themes
- By Darwin8u on 12-08-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Glory
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a 22-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he decides to embark upon a “perilous, daredevil project” — an illegal attempt to reenter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919. He succeeds — but at a terrible cost.
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White émigré version of This Side of Paradise
- By Darwin8u on 07-17-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Speak Memory
- An Autobiography Revisited
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.
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Speak, Mnemosyne!
- By Darwin8u on 08-09-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
What listeners say about Laughter in the Dark
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JG
- 07-13-23
Better story than Lolita? But is this his only theme?
Knowing what we know now and how bad it’s always been, I’m repelled by such “old guy pedophilia” stories that were evidently acceptable to write about in Nabokov’s time (Thomas Mann was also fascinated with pedophile stalking). I almost put this book down in disgust, but stayed with it because the writing style is so good. The story finally took off with new surprises. Some didn’t find any morals in the story. It’s shadenfreud and yet satisfying that Albinus (Humbert) really got his comeuppance. Moral: mature men and women ought not be fools and get involved in such rotten business.
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- winterspell
- 04-17-16
My 3rd Nabokov novel (not incl. his 100 short stories collection)
This was a fun easy listen - first time I didn't have to rewind anything w/ Nabokov. Read a review on here (or reviews) suggesting this was a good "intro" to Nabokov...I disagree. After first having read Lolita in paperback form, as well as most of his Short Stories (finished up in the audio expanded version), and most recently the audio version of Transparent Things, I believe that Laughter in the Dark is such a far cry from the unique brilliance this author has bestowed upon the fiction genre.
But I also don't think Lolita is a great intro either...I only picked up his Short Stories after consulting my most well-read friend & complaining about the, at times, excruciatingly repetitive nature of Lolita's narrator's obsessions (granted I had seen Kubrick's movie version pre-reading so that eliminated all suspense).
While I found Laughter in the Dark thoroughly entertaining, it was in part because I spent much of the time thinking about how much different it was than the Nabokov I have read.
If you want an intro to the magic of Nabokov, I highly recommend his short stories. Read/listen to this one later!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 05-19-13
Death is often the point of life's joke
An early Nabokov with many funky allusions to Tolstoy, early anticipations and presages of Lolita, and Nabokovian black humor from beginning to end. As a independent work, I don't think it belongs in the top tier of Nabokov's lush ouvre, but it seems to me to be a piece where Nabokov establishes his literary sea legs. The genealogy of most of his great later work seem to all thread back to 'Laughter in the Dark'/aka 'Kamera obskura'.
In this novel, Nabokov is playing with themes of vision, blindness, truth, deception, art and morality. You see many of Nabokov's later motifs surrounding vision floating (like mouches volantes) through this early work: mirrors, window pains, mimicry, scintillations, semblances, glasses, movies, etc. It wouldn't be Nabokov if he played any of these themes straight. He bends the narrative and plays with Tolstoy's belief that it is "the essential nature of truth to be hidden from, then revealed to, the eyes." Nabokov gives you the goods and gives them to you good and hard right between the eyes.
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- Darryl
- 07-03-12
Nabokov is excellent and this is a good intro
Nabokov is far and away one of the best authors. this is a very accessible novel and very fun as well. dark humor, brilliant writing. I loved this one more after listening to it at same time as a friend and we talked about it. I read it long ago and am glad to have chance to revisit all his work. I keep turning friends onto Nabokov and they are not disappointed. I particularly like how he tries to mirror the themes and content in the actual writing and structure. when you get to the end, imagine it all as the movie it's structured as with the scenes/short chapters and then you'll see it in your head as he intended. one of my favorites, until the next Nabokov i listen to...
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5 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 11-05-20
Does Anyone Know the Moral of this Story?
I did not understand the moral of this sorry. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed o get out of it further than a peek into Nobokov’s imagination and a brief escape from the world. These things aren’t to be underestimated of course, my only complaint was that I didn’t understand the moral or even know if there was one at all. Very well performed, though.
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- billmccauley
- 10-09-18
brilliant
Nabokov is always superb. Though an early work it shows the brilliance of his prose.
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