This audiobook looks beyond the opulence of Paris in the Belle poque, exploring the civil unrest--and ultimately extreme violence--brought on by political corruption, worker exploitation, and deep class divides. With narrator Peter Ganim's buttery smooth voice and excellent French pronunciations, the present day fades away, and early 1900s Paris comes alive. Ganim evokes images of a grand city teeming with artistic and industrial progress, then dispassionately describes in detail the hopeless plight of the lower-class workers. As a result, listeners can feel on a visceral level the dissonance between two versions of the same city. Sympathy for the violent anarchists and their crime spree may be a step too far, but listeners are asked to consider how systematic oppression can lead to extreme actions.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
Duration: 9 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781549167539
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
WORLD | HISTORY | TRUE CRIME
Buruma’s subtle and effective narration style is essential to this chronicle.
Bard College historian Buruma has a personal link to WWII-era Berliners, his Dutch father having been a forced laborer in wartime Berlin. Buruma’s account highlights instances of the survival and rescue of Jews and of the Berlin residents who came forward to assist them. But of most Berliners, he says, “Their main aim was to stay out of trouble.” Buruma’s performance as both historian and narrator is a model of restraint and reliance on fact. He shapes a powerful narrative around Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad and year-by-year shifts in civilian morale. As deprivation and disillusion with the Nazi regime set in, the struggle for survival extended to all Berliners.
Buruma’s subtle and effective narration style is essential to this chronicle.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
Duration: 12 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217282210
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
A hint of hijinks in sleepy Königsberg sets ears ablaze.
The obscure uproar so vividly portrayed in this brief audiobook couldn’t be farther from today’s media commotions—or nearer. This “small vortex of turbulence” sounds like a stage farce: It’s set in backwater Königsberg, capital of East Prussia, in the 1830s, during the lull between the Napoleonic wars and the 1848 Revolution. Take a preposterous but compelling religious cult and two guileless but strikingly handsome Lutheran clergymen, add only a hint of fornication, and gossip does the rest. Vidish Athavale’s measured, finely nuanced narration gives edge and authority to a narrative without a wasted word or useless detail. And he clearly relishes the polysyllabic 19th-century German names.
A hint of hijinks in sleepy Königsberg sets ears ablaze.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
Duration: 4 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217282234
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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