Try free for 30 days
-
The Decameron
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 29 hrs and 55 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $43.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- By: Victor Hugo
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the grotesque bell-ringer Quasimodo, Victor Hugo created one of the most vivid characters in classic fiction. Quasimodo's doomed love for the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda is an example of the traditional love theme of beauty and the beast. Yet, set against the massive background of Notre Dame de Paris and interwoven with the sacred and secular life of medieval France, it takes on a larger perspective.
-
-
A Literary Masterpiece
- By Matt Baker on 10-01-2018
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
Masterpiece and superbly read.
- By Allie C on 31-01-2017
-
Song of Solomon
- A Novel
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.
-
-
Fabulous story
- By Erica on 29-01-2021
-
Tristram Shandy
- By: Laurence Sterne
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laurence Sterne’s most famous novel is a biting satire of literary conventions and contemporary 18th-century values. Renowned for its parody of established narrative techniques, Tristram Shandyis commonly regarded as the forerunner of avant-garde fiction. Tristram’s characteristic digressions on a whole range of unlikely subjects (including battle strategy and noses!) are endlessly surprising and make this one of Britain’s greatest comic achievements.
-
-
Great performance of a classic
- By David on 16-04-2020
-
Ulysses
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Jim Norton
- Length: 27 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.
-
-
Groan
- By Travis on 03-11-2017
-
The Canterbury Tales
- Penguin Classics
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill (Translation)
- Narrated by: Lesley Manville, Daniel Weyman, Derek Jacobi, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.
-
-
Better than expected
- By Brydie Robinson on 07-02-2023
-
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- By: Victor Hugo
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the grotesque bell-ringer Quasimodo, Victor Hugo created one of the most vivid characters in classic fiction. Quasimodo's doomed love for the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda is an example of the traditional love theme of beauty and the beast. Yet, set against the massive background of Notre Dame de Paris and interwoven with the sacred and secular life of medieval France, it takes on a larger perspective.
-
-
A Literary Masterpiece
- By Matt Baker on 10-01-2018
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
Masterpiece and superbly read.
- By Allie C on 31-01-2017
-
Song of Solomon
- A Novel
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.
-
-
Fabulous story
- By Erica on 29-01-2021
-
Tristram Shandy
- By: Laurence Sterne
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laurence Sterne’s most famous novel is a biting satire of literary conventions and contemporary 18th-century values. Renowned for its parody of established narrative techniques, Tristram Shandyis commonly regarded as the forerunner of avant-garde fiction. Tristram’s characteristic digressions on a whole range of unlikely subjects (including battle strategy and noses!) are endlessly surprising and make this one of Britain’s greatest comic achievements.
-
-
Great performance of a classic
- By David on 16-04-2020
-
Ulysses
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Jim Norton
- Length: 27 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.
-
-
Groan
- By Travis on 03-11-2017
-
The Canterbury Tales
- Penguin Classics
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill (Translation)
- Narrated by: Lesley Manville, Daniel Weyman, Derek Jacobi, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.
-
-
Better than expected
- By Brydie Robinson on 07-02-2023
Publisher's Summary
This collection of tales is set in 1348, the year of the Black Death. Florence is a dying, corrupt city, described plainly in all of its horrors. Seven ladies and three gentlemen meet in a church and decide to escape from the charnel house of reality by staying in the hills of Fiesole; there they pass the time telling stories for 10 days.
They set up a working arrangement whereby each would be king or queen for a day; each day the ruler commanded a story be told following certain stipulations. Their existence is that of the enchanted medieval dreamworld: a paradise of flowers, ever-flowing fountains, shade trees, soft breezes, where all luxuries of food and drink abound. Virtue reigns along with medieval gentilesse in its finest sense.
The stories they weave, however, differ from their own idyllic sojourn. They tell tales about ordinary people, tales marked by intense realism in a world where dreams and enchanted gardens have little place. Boccaccio draws on the actual geography of the region to bring the stories alive; different social classes are portrayed with their own language and clothing. Within the stories told by his 10 refugees from Florence, the satire often bites deep, Boccaccio's comic mood embracing evil and holiness alike with sympathy and tolerance. Like Chaucer, he is indulgent, exposing moral and social corruption but leaving guilty characters to condemn themselves. In its frank, open-minded treatment of flesh as flesh, its use of paradox, cynicism, and realistic handling of character, this work transcends the medieval period and, going beyond the Renaissance, takes its place as universal art.