John Cleese (of "Monty Python" and "Fawlty Towers" fame) follows up last year's "coup de mike," Dante's INFERNO, with this quirky, brilliant rendering of Lewis's tongue-in-cheek Screwtape. Uncle SCREWTAPE, a master devil, herein gives advice to nephew Wormwood on the ins and outs of entrapping human souls. Ever-sensitive to his text, Cleese gives an imaginative and risible performance as the title demon. No Freddy Krueger he, but a bourgeois stuffed shirt--pedantic, punctilious, dry--as distinctly English as Mephistopheles is German. In addition to the humor arising from this approach, Cleese manages clever, novel ways to deliver individual passages for maximum power. This is, after all, a moral satire. He is over the top but never out of control, for he never overshadows the text. A star turn of the finest kind.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 1999
Duration: 4 hrs
Publisher: Audio Literature
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
There is a graceful style to Rachel Seiffert's writing that contrasts with the brutal story that unfolds, set in the Ukraine in 1941, after the German invasion. Remarkably, Seiffert's prose is almost uplifting, even during scenes that highlight the viciousness and evil of the Nazi invaders, including one featuring an SS death squad. Narrator Mark Deakins's superb performance complements each scene and enhances Seiffert's gripping dialogue. He narrates with patience and a low-key style that allows listeners to follow the story and absorb every nuance of the dialogue. The result is a rarity, a realistic Nazi-era novel that defies expectations by showing the horrors of the regime without depressing the audience.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
Duration: 7 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9781524782924
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
In this imaginative story, young Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn is distracted from his amorous adventures when he encounters famed psychologist Sigmund Freud in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Replete with innuendo, discussions of psychoanalysis, and "Freudian slips," Skibell's historical fiction provides a window on Freud's world—his obsessions, patients, admirers, destructive habits, and vanities—and his profound influence. The early Esperanto movement and Jewish spiritualism also make appearances. Jeff Woodman consistently presents the youthful and confused Sammelsohn, whose naïve voice is balanced by the haughty tones of Freud and his colleagues. Woodman excels at dramatizing the tension between Sammelsohn's penchant for scientific rationalism and his exposure to experimental mysticism. A hilarious scene ensues when we hear conversations with Sammelsohn's father, who speaks only in biblical quotes, even for the most mundane utterances.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2010
Duration: 22 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781615735310
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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