Audiobooks by Annie Proulx

Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis

"A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week ‘A subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!’ Bill McKibben ‘I learned something new – and found something amazing – on every page’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx – whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth – comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx’s explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire and America’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest. Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when ‘in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.’ Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display. ‘Magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats’ Guardian ‘Proulx's sparkling book will open your eyes to humanity's reckless trashing of wetlands’ Telegraph ‘A haunting tribute … Proulx’s poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read’ Financial Times"

Annie Proulx (Author), Gabra Zackman (Narrator)

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[Spanish] - Brokeback Mountain

"Annie Proulx, ganadora del premio Pulitzer, nos narra esta estremecedora historia de amor entre dos vaqueros, una historia capaz de sobrevivir a todo excepto a la salvaje intolerancia del mundo que los rodea. Ennis del Mar y Jack Twist son dos rancheros que se conocen cuando aceptan un trabajo para apacentar juntos un rebaño por encima de la zona arbolada en Brokeback Mountain. Ese verano surgirá entre ellos una intensa historia de amor."

Annie Proulx (Author), Pablo Azar (Narrator)

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[Italian] - Avviso ai naviganti

"Quoyle vive a Brooklyn, sbarca il lunario facendo il giornalista, ha una moglie e due figlie. Una vita come tante, tra piccole gioie e grandi frustrazioni: finché, un giorno, viene licenziato dal quotidiano per cui lavora e, tornato a casa, trova ad attenderlo la babysitter con un messaggio da parte di sua moglie: ha deciso di abbandonarlo definitivamente per fuggire con un amante. Si ritrova così da solo, senza soldi e con due figlie da mantenere. Chiunque, davanti a due catastrofi di questa portata, si lascerebbe andare, tanto più se, come Quoyle, ha sempre vissuto di piccoli e grandi compromessi. E invece accade l'inverosimile. Ribellandosi a un destino che sembrerebbe già scritto, e facendo appello a un coraggio che ignorava di avere, prende il primo traghetto per Terranova insieme alle figlie e a un'attempata zia e va a stabilirsi in un villaggio coperto di neve quasi tutto l'anno, ai confini del mondo. Un luogo aspro ed estremo, permeato da legami antichissimi e oscure superstizioni, che si trasforma nell'ultima occasione per ritrovarsi, e impossessarsi, forse per la prima volta, della sua vita."

Annie Proulx (Author), Jacopo Calatroni (Narrator)

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Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017

"LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017 NOW A MAJOR TELEVISION SERIES From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests. In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters – barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years – their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions; the revenge of rivals; accidents; pestilence; Indian attacks; and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse. Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid – in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope – that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination."

Annie Proulx (Author), Robert Petkoff (Narrator)

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Are We There Yet?

"A lot can happen on the way from one place to another, especially when an overnight flight makes for an unexpected romantic encounter between strangers seated together; a trucker finds life beyond the ranch where he grew up; and a bored Midwestern housewife tries to escape Kansas City. This anthology of tales about people in transit features Stuart Dybek's 'Pet Milk', read by Keith Szarabajka; Martha Gellhorn's 'Miami-New York', read by Joanna Gleason; Edward P. Jones' 'An Orange Line Train to Ballston', read by Sonia Manzano; Annie Proulx's 'The Trickle-Down Effect', read by James Naughton; Dorothy Thomas' 'The Getaway', read by Mia Dillon; James Thurber's 'A Ride with Olympy', read by David Rakoff; and Eudora Welty's 'No Place for You, My Love', read by Andrea Marcovicci."

Annie Proulx, Dorothy Thomas, Edward P. Jones, Eudora Welty, James Thurber, Martha Gellhorn, Stuart Dybek (Author), Andrea Marcovicci, David Rakoff, James Naughton, Joanna Gleason, Keith Szarabajka, Mia Dillon, Sonia Manzano (Narrator)

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Brokeback Mountain

"The film tie-in edition of the story by Annie Proulx, now a movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Randy Quaid, Anne Hathaway and Heath Ledger. Winner of four BAFTAs 2006, including Best Film, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Screenplay – Adapted and the David Lean Award for Direction Winner of four Golden Globe Awards 2005, including Best Screenplay, Best Motion Picture and Best Director Winner of the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture, 2005 Venice International Film Festival Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar live hard and lonely lives as ranch hands in the wild, unforgiving landscape of Wyoming. They are 'country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered and tough-spoken', glad to have found one another's company where none had been expected. But suddenly companionship becomes something else on Brokeback Mountain: something not looked for, something deadly …"

Annie Proulx (Author), Campbell Scott (Narrator)

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