Literary Criticism audiobooks

Monsters

By: Claire Dederer

Narrated by: Claire Dederer

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and contemporary artists but dislike the artist?

"A lively, personal... Read more

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman...

Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today.

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA... Read more

One in a Millennial

By: Kate Kennedy

Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist

One In a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned... Read more

Meet Me in the Margins

By: Melissa Ferguson

Narrated by: Talon David

Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

You’ve Got Mail meets The Proposal—this romance is one for the books.Savannah Cade’s dreams are coming true. The Claire Donovan, editor-in-chief of the most successful romance publishing company in the country, has requested to see the manuscript Savannah’s been secretly writing. The only problem: she’s an editor for a different company, and... Read more

Minor Feelings

By: Cathy Park Hong

Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER• ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE• A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness

“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

In... Read more

Pandora's Jar

By: Natalie Haynes

Narrated by: Natalie Haynes

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

“Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's TaleThe national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek... Read more

An Odyssey

By: Daniel Mendelsohn

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

Length: 10 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Newsday
A Kirkus Best Memoir of 2017
Shortlisted for the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize

From award-winning memoirist and critic, and bestselling author of The Lost: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading--and reliving--Homer's... Read more

El olor de la guayaba

By: Gabriel García Márquez & Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza

Narrated by: Diego Trujillo & Carlos Manuel Vesga

Length: 4 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

En El olor de la guayaba pueden encontrarse las claves de un proceso creador y creativo de singular riqueza. Si formalmente El olor de la guayaba es una prolongada conversación del escritor y periodista Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza con su viejo amigo Gabriel García Márquez -lo que da ocasión a éste para desgranar convivacidad sus remembranzas,... Read more

There Plant Eyes

By: M. Leona Godin

Narrated by: M. Leona Godin

Length: 11 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight.
 
There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture,... Read more

The Dark Fantastic

By: Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Narrated by: Janina Edwards

Length: 7 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children's publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked... Read more

Brown Album

By: Porochista Khakpour

Narrated by: Porochista Khakpour

Length: 6 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

From the much-acclaimed novelist and essayist, a beautifully rendered, poignant collection of personal essays, chronicling immigrant and Iranian-American life in our contemporary moment.

Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating... Read more

Proust's Duchess

By: Caroline Weber

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 29 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A brilliant look at turn-of-the-century Paris through the first in-depth study of the three women Proust used to create his supreme fictional character, the Duchesse de Guermantes. “Weber has done a remarkable job of bringing to life…a world of culture, glamour and privilege.” —The Wall Street Journal  

Geneviève Halévy... Read more

A is for Arsenic

By: Kathryn Harkup

Narrated by: Nicky Diss

Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Shortlisted for the BMA Book Awards and Macavity Awards 2016

Fourteen novels. Fourteen poisons. Just because it's fiction doesn’t mean it's all made-up ...

Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a... Read more

The World Broke in Two

By: Bill Goldstein

Narrated by: Bill Goldstein

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism


The World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf,... Read more

The Hedgehog and the Fox

By: Isaiah Berlin

Narrated by: Peter Kenny

Length: 2 hours 36 minutes

Abridged: No

This compelling audiobook narrated by Peter Kenny presents Isaiah Berlin's acclaimed essay on Tolstoy and historical understanding

"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... Read more

Any Person is the Only Self

By: Elisa Gabbert

Narrated by: Elisa Gabbert

Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Contagiously curious essays on reading, art, and the life of the mind, from the acclaimed author of The Unreality of Memory.
Who are we when we read? When we journal? Are we more ourselves alone or with friends? Right now or in memory? How does time transform us and the art we love?
In sixteen dazzling, expansive essays, the acclaimed essayist and... Read more

Big Fiction

By: Dan Sinykin

Narrated by: Mike Lenz

Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

In the late 1950s, Random House editor Jason Epstein would talk jazz with Ralph Ellison or chat with Andy Warhol while pouring drinks in his office. By the 1970s, editors were poring over profit-and-loss statements. The electronics company RCA bought Random House in 1965, and then other large corporations purchased other formerly independent... Read more

The Master Builder

By: Henrik Ibsen

Narrated by: Expatriate

Length: 2 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Master Builder Halvard Solness is an ageing architect who has not achieved what he wanted, neither in art nor in love. He fears and bullies his juniors, and thinks he is going mad. His wife and mistress try to care for him as best they can, without themselves getting hurt in return. The situation is further fraught by the arrival of young and... Read more

Trick Mirror

By: Jia Tolentino

Narrated by: Jia Tolentino

Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire
 
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia... Read more

Don't Panic

By: Neil Gaiman

Narrated by: Simon Jones & Neil Gaiman

Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Now in audiobook for the first time ever! Read by Simon Jones, the original “Arthur Dent,” and written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, Don’t Panic is the definitive chronicle of all things Hitchhiker!First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural... Read more

Shelf Life

By: Nadia Wassef

Narrated by: Vaneh Assadourian

Length: 7 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

The streets of Cairo make strange music: the echoing calls to prayer, the raging insults hurled between drivers, the steady crescendo of horns honking, the shouts of street vendors, the television sets and radios blaring from every sidewalk. Nadia Wassef knows this song by heart. In 2002, with her sister, Hind, and their friend, Nihal, she... Read more

Mythology

By: Edith Hamilton

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Dive into the timeless tales of gods and heroes in this bestselling A-to-Z encyclopedia detailing classic myths and legends—perfect for curious readers and academics alike. Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the... Read more

Divine Might

By: Natalie Haynes

Narrated by: Natalie Haynes

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar.Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the... Read more

Splinters

By: Leslie Jamison

Narrated by: Leslie Jamison

Length: 8 hours 32 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes the riveting story of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage—an exploration of motherhood, art, and new love.
 
Leslie Jamison has become one of our most beloved contemporary voices, a scribe of the real, the true, the complex. She has been compared... Read more