The Written World and the Unwritten World
Essays
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Prime members: New to Audible?Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
The Written World and the Unwritten World
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Edoardo Ballerini
-
By:
-
Italo Calvino
About this listen
A rich collection of essays offering an extraordinary global view of Calvino’s approach to writing, reading, and interpreting literature.
An extraordinary collection of essays, forewords, articles, and interviews, The Written World and the Unwritten World displays the remarkable intelligence and razor-sharp wit of prolific Italian writer Italo Calvino as he explores the meaning of literature in a rapidly changing world. From classics to contemporary literature, from tradition to the avant-garde, Calvino masterfully explores reading, writing, and translating through careful and illuminating discussion of the works of Bakhtin, Brecht, Cortázar, Thomas Mann, Octavio Paz, Georges Perec, Salman Rushdie, Gore Vidal, and more. Drawn from Mondo scritto e mondo non scritto (2002), Sulla fiaba (1988), and other uncollected essays, this volume of previously untranslated work—now rendered in English by acclaimed translator Ann Goldstein—is a major statement in literary criticism.
©2023 HarperCollins Publishers (P)2023 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Hermit in Paris
- Autobiographical Writings
- By: Martin McLaughlin translator, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era's most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II, traces the course of his literary career, and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960.
By: Martin McLaughlin translator, and others
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Italian Folktales
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 28 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Chosen as one of the New York Times's 10 best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
At Last: Unbridled Delight
- By John on 06-12-20
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 11
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Uneven but worth listening to if you like Calvino
- By Daniel on 02-21-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
Difficult Loves
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 6
In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
classic
- By JBeirens on 10-10-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
Hermit in Paris
- Autobiographical Writings
- By: Martin McLaughlin translator, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era's most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II, traces the course of his literary career, and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960.
By: Martin McLaughlin translator, and others
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Italian Folktales
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 28 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Chosen as one of the New York Times's 10 best books in the year of its original publication, this collection immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
At Last: Unbridled Delight
- By John on 06-12-20
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 11
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Uneven but worth listening to if you like Calvino
- By Daniel on 02-21-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
Difficult Loves
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 6
In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
classic
- By JBeirens on 10-10-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
Fantastic Tales
- Visionary and Everyday
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 23 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Vampires, ghosts, and other horrors abound in this collection of 19th-century fantastic literature, selected and edited by Italo Calvino, a 20th-century master of the speculative.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Unexpected pleasure
- By Grant on 11-06-20
By: Italo Calvino
-
Why Read the Classics?
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here - spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism - are 36 immediately relevant, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Complete Cosmicomics
- Translated by Martin McLaughlin, Tim Parks, & William Weaver
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator, Tim Parks - translator, and others
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
Italo Calvino's beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these 34 dazzling stories - collected here in one definitive anthology - relate complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Moments of Greatness = Worth the Read
- By Amazon Customer on 08-06-18
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Mr. Palomar
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 18
Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This is an AMAZING Book!
- By The on 09-13-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
Numbers in the Dark
- And Other Stories
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition. Here are speculative stories on life in the digital age, genre-bending wonders, and “impossible interviews” with the likes of Montezuma and a Neanderthal.
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Cloven Viscount
- Translated by Archibald Colquhoun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures. In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bissected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. The two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, fight a bloody duel, and achieve a miraculous resolution.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Personal Writings
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 15
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 13
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 13
Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Personal Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope and depth of his interior life. Grappling with an indifferent mother and an impoverished childhood in Algeria, an ever-present sense of exile, and an ongoing search for equilibrium, Camus's personal essays shed new light on the emotional and experiential foundations of his philosophical thought....
By: Albert Camus
-
The Rebel
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 166
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 136
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 132
By one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of our century, The Rebel is a classic essay on revolution. For Albert Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the "essential dimensions" of human nature, manifested in man's timeless Promethean struggle against the conditions of his existence, as well as the popular uprisings against established orders throughout history. And yet, with an eye toward the French Revolution and its regicides and deicides, he reveals how inevitably the course of revolution leads to tyranny.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This book is amazing
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-19
By: Albert Camus
-
Illuminations
- Essays and Reflections
- By: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 26
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 25
Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
finally
- By Anonymous User on 12-08-21
By: Walter Benjamin, and others
-
Our Oriental Heritage
- The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,318
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,166
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Wonderful
- By Michael on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
-
The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
Related to this topic
-
The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Discarded Image
- An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Richard Elwood
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 165
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 138
The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval worldview, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the middle ages and renaissance. It describes the 'image' discarded by later years as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe". This, Lewis' last book, has been hailed as "the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind".
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
I hope more of Lewis's scholastic stuff is coming
- By James on 04-01-21
By: C. S. Lewis
-
Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
By: Wolfram Eilenberger, and others
-
High Weirdness
- Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
- By: Erik Davis
- Narrated by: Erik Davis
- Length: 20 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 215
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 171
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality - but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
High Weirdness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-17-20
By: Erik Davis
-
Orientalism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 608
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 492
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 493
This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
We're lucky to have this on audio
- By Delano on 02-27-13
By: Edward Said
-
The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Discarded Image
- An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Richard Elwood
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 165
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 138
The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval worldview, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the middle ages and renaissance. It describes the 'image' discarded by later years as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe". This, Lewis' last book, has been hailed as "the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind".
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
I hope more of Lewis's scholastic stuff is coming
- By James on 04-01-21
By: C. S. Lewis
-
Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
By: Wolfram Eilenberger, and others
-
High Weirdness
- Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
- By: Erik Davis
- Narrated by: Erik Davis
- Length: 20 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 215
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 174
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 171
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality - but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
High Weirdness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-17-20
By: Erik Davis
-
Orientalism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 608
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 492
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 493
This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
We're lucky to have this on audio
- By Delano on 02-27-13
By: Edward Said
-
Irrational Man
- A Study in Existential Philosophy
- By: William Barrett
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 82
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Irrational Man begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
heady
- By A. Antine on 07-28-22
By: William Barrett
-
The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 233
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 136
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
William Blake vs the World
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 97
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 83
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 83
A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Best book ever
- By idamae on 11-04-22
By: John Higgs
-
Machiavelli
- The Art of Teaching People What to Fear
- By: Patrick Boucheron
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 49
In a series of poignant vignettes, a preeminent historian makes a compelling case for Machiavelli as an unjustly maligned figure with valuable political insights that resonate as strongly today as they did in his time.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Great Tester
- By Iván on 04-09-24
-
The Hedgehog and the Fox (Second Edition)
- An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
- By: Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy - editor, Michael Ignatieff - foreword
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The Fox Who Tried To Be A Hedgehog
- By Rich S. on 12-14-21
By: Isaiah Berlin, and others
-
Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- By: Clive James
- Narrated by: Clive James
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 149
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Very enjoyable and well narrated
- By Larbi on 05-18-08
By: Clive James
-
Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 33
Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
-
To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- By: Phillip Lopate
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Not a guide on writing personal essays
- By A. Yoshida on 08-07-13
By: Phillip Lopate
-
The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis
- How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind
- By: Jason M Baxter
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 119
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 104
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 104
C. S. Lewis had one of the great minds of the 20th century. Many know Lewis as an author of fiction and fantasy literature, including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. Others know him for his books in apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. But few know him for his scholarly work as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. What shaped the mind of this great thinker?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent
- By andrew wilson smith on 03-08-22
By: Jason M Baxter
-
Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 154
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 157
A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
-
Martin Heidegger
- By: George Steiner
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 113
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 97
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 96
With characteristic lucidity and style, Steiner makes Heidegger's immensely difficult body of work accessible to the general reader. In a new introduction, Steiner addresses language and philosophy and the rise of Nazism. "It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger." (George Kateb, The New Republic)
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Where is Heidegger on audible?!
- By Abdullah Taha on 10-14-19
By: George Steiner
-
The Givenness of Things
- Essays
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Mostly thoughts on religious things
- By Adam Shields on 01-26-16
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Last Comes the Raven
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection - one of Calvino’s earliest - take place in a World War II era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller’s later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Hermit in Paris
- Autobiographical Writings
- By: Martin McLaughlin translator, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era's most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II, traces the course of his literary career, and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960.
By: Martin McLaughlin translator, and others
-
Why Read the Classics?
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here - spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism - are 36 immediately relevant, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Path to the Spider's Nests
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Italo Calvino was only 23 when he first published this bold and imaginative novel. It tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II. He lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spends as much time as he can at a seedy bar where he amuses the adult patrons. After a mishap with a Nazi soldier, Pin becomes involved with a band of partisans. Calvino's portrayal of these characters, seen through the eyes of a child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian resistance but an insightful coming-of-age story.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
How unique to use a child’s viewpoint of war.
- By BBWrighter on 07-17-24
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Uses of Literature
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In these widely praised essays, Calvino reflects on literature as process, the great narrative game in the course of which writer and reader are challenged to understand the world. Calvino himself made the selection of pieces to be included in this volume.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Last Comes the Raven
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
Blending reality and illusion with elegance and precision, the stories in this collection - one of Calvino’s earliest - take place in a World War II era and postwar Italy tinged with the visionary and fablelike qualities that would come to define this master storyteller’s later style. A trio of gluttonous burglars invade a pastry shop; two children trespass upon a forbidden garden; a wealthy family invites a rustic goatherd to lunch, only to mock him.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Hermit in Paris
- Autobiographical Writings
- By: Martin McLaughlin translator, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
This posthumously published collection offers a unique, puzzle-like portrait of one of the postwar era's most inventive and mercurial writers. In letters and journals, occasional pieces and interviews, Italo Calvino recalls growing up in seaside Italy and fighting in the antifascist resistance during World War II, traces the course of his literary career, and reflects on his many travels, including a journey through the United States in 1959 and 1960.
By: Martin McLaughlin translator, and others
-
Why Read the Classics?
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. Why Read the Classics? is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here - spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism - are 36 immediately relevant, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Path to the Spider's Nests
- By: Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlin - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 7
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 6
Italo Calvino was only 23 when he first published this bold and imaginative novel. It tells the story of Pin, a cobbler's apprentice in a town on the Ligurian coast during World War II. He lives with his sister, a prostitute, and spends as much time as he can at a seedy bar where he amuses the adult patrons. After a mishap with a Nazi soldier, Pin becomes involved with a band of partisans. Calvino's portrayal of these characters, seen through the eyes of a child, is not only a revealing commentary on the Italian resistance but an insightful coming-of-age story.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
How unique to use a child’s viewpoint of war.
- By BBWrighter on 07-17-24
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
The Uses of Literature
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In these widely praised essays, Calvino reflects on literature as process, the great narrative game in the course of which writer and reader are challenged to understand the world. Calvino himself made the selection of pieces to be included in this volume.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Fantastic Tales
- Visionary and Everyday
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 23 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
Vampires, ghosts, and other horrors abound in this collection of 19th-century fantastic literature, selected and edited by Italo Calvino, a 20th-century master of the speculative.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Unexpected pleasure
- By Grant on 11-06-20
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 11
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their stories. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Uneven but worth listening to if you like Calvino
- By Daniel on 02-21-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
The Rigor of Angels
- Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: David Glass
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
The most ridiculous narration
- By Anonymous User on 03-07-24
By: William Egginton
-
The Cloven Viscount
- Translated by Archibald Colquhoun
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
In this fantastically macabre tale, the separate halves of a nobleman split in two by a cannonball go on to pursue their own independent adventures. In a battle against the Turks, Viscount Medardo of Terralba is bissected lengthwise by a cannonball. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. The two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, fight a bloody duel, and achieve a miraculous resolution.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Marcovaldo
- or The Seasons in the City (Translated by William Weaver)
- By: Italo Calvino, William Weaver - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect narrator and wonderful story
- By Drew on 12-17-17
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Into the War
- By: Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction.
By: Martin McLaughlin, and others
-
The Road to San Giovanni
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
In five elegant autobiographical meditations Calvino delves into his past, remembering awkward childhood walks with his father, a lifelong obsession with the cinema, and fighting in the Italian Resistance against the Fascists. He also muses on the social contracts, language, and sensations associated with emptying the kitchen rubbish and the shape he would, if asked, consider the world. These reflections on the nature of memory itself are engaging, witty, and lit through with Calvino's alchemical brilliance.
By: Italo Calvino
-
Difficult Loves
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 6
In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
classic
- By JBeirens on 10-10-24
By: Italo Calvino
-
Illuminations
- Essays and Reflections
- By: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 26
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 25
Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
finally
- By Anonymous User on 12-08-21
By: Walter Benjamin, and others
-
Invisible Cities
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Richard Higgins
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 14
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 12
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 12
In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Such a wonderful book ruined by terrible narration
- By anonymous on 08-18-23
By: Italo Calvino
-
Mr. Palomar
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 18
Mr. Palomar, whose name purposely evokes that of the famous telescope, is a seeker after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. Whether contemplating a cheese, a woman's breasts, or a gorilla's behavior, he brings us a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This is an AMAZING Book!
- By The on 09-13-19
By: Italo Calvino
-
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 647
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 572
-
Story3.5 out of 5 stars 567
Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but 10, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The position of the feet during reading...
- By literate rose on 02-09-18
By: Italo Calvino