Audiobooks narrated by David Horovitch

Ivan Turgenev: A BBC Radio Full-Cast Drama Collection: First Love, Father and Sons, A Month in the C

Nine classic works by the Russian literary giant, adapted for BBC Radio Ivan Turgenev stands alongside Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as one of the three great Russian novelists of the 19th century. He was also a consummate short story writer, poet and playwright, and the first Russian author to become popular in the West. This specially curated collection showcases his key works, from the most celebrated to the undeservedly underrated. Described as ‘one of the most perfect things ever written’, the lyrical novella First Love tells the story of 16-year-old Vladimir, whose longing for the capricious Zinaida informs his whole life. Dramatised for Radio 4, it stars Simon Cadell, Rosalind Ayres and Bill Nighy. Succeeding it is Turgenev’s masterpiece, Fathers and Sons, an exploration of the eternal conflict between the reactionary older generation and the revolutionary younger one. John Castle stars as youthful nihilist Bazarov, with Maurice Denham as his father Nikolai. First published in 1855 as Two Women, Turgenev’s best-known play A Month in the Country centres around a landowner’s wife who finds herself attracted to her son’s tutor. Translated by Isaiah Berlin, our Radio 3 version stars Maureen O’Brien and Gerard Murphy. Written a few years before A Month in the Country, the little-known play The Poor Gentleman is an emotional comedy about an elderly man’s devotion to a daughter he can never recognise publicly. It stars Frank Finlay, Morag Hood and Colin Baker. Next up is Smoke, Turgenev’s only novel not to be set in Russia. Baden Baden is the setting for a tale that blends poignant love story and searing political satire, starring Garard Green, Rachel Gurney and Patricia Leventon. Meanwhile, in the short story ‘The Dog’, a mild Hussar (Timothy West) is the subject of a bizarre haunting… Turgenev’s debut novel, Rudin, features that archetypal character in Russian literature, the ‘superfluous man’. Ian Holm stars as the eponymous hero, an idealistic intellectual who is incapable of taking action: and suffers for it. Set just before the Crimean War, the romantic novella On the Eve has passion and patriotism as its themes. Amanda Root stars as the upper-class Elena, who embarks on a doomed affair with Bulgarian revolutionary Insarov (Philip Franks). We conclude as we began, with a tale of first love – Spring Torrents, one of Turgenev’s greatest and most autobiographical novellas. Adapted for Radio 4’s ‘Book at Bedtime’, it is read by David Horovitch. First published 1848 (The Poor Gentleman), 1855/1872 (A Month in the Country), 1857 (Rudin), 1860 (First Love, On the Eve), 1862 (Fathers and Sons), 1866 (‘The Dog’), 1867 (Smoke), 1872 (Spring Torrents) Production credits Written by Ivan Turgenev With thanks to Keith Wickham Contents List First Love Fathers and Sons A Month in the Country The Poor Gentleman Smoke The Dog Rudin On the Eve Spring Torrents © 2024 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2024 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Ivan Turgenev (Author), Amanda Root, Bill Nighy, David Horovitch, Full Cast, Hugh Dickson, Ian Holm, Maureen O'brien, Norman Shelley, Patrick Troughton, Rosalind Ayres, Tim Pigott-Smith, Timothy West (Narrator)

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The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European

Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era. Zweig's books (novels, biographies, essays) were translated into numerous languages, and he moved in the highest literary circles; he also encountered many leading political and social figures of his day. The World of Yesterday is a remarkable, totally engrossing history. This translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed shortly before his tragic death in 1942. It is read with sympathy and understanding by David Horovitch.

Stefan Zweig (Author), David Horovitch (Narrator)

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In a Glass Darkly

Demons, vengeful spirits, insanity, premature burials and lesbian vampires, In a Glass Darkly contains five diabolical tales of horror and mystery that will get the heart racing. Each story, including the famous 'Green Tea' and 'Carmilla', is presented as a case from the posthumous papers of Dr Martin Hesselius, a metaphysical physician who has no doubt as to the existence of supernatural phenomena - unlike our anxious protagonists... These traditional, yet unfamiliar tales were revered upon release, with Bram Stoker writing his own vampire story some twenty years later, and Henry James once suggesting that this is 'the ideal reading... for the hours after midnight'.

Sheridan Le Fanu (Author), Alison Pettitt, Daniel Philpott, David Horovitch, Jonathan Keeble, Nicholas Boulton, Sean Barrett (Narrator)

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The Buried Giant: A novel

From the author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But, at least, the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, decide that now is the time, finally, for them to set off across this troubled land of mist and rain to find the son they have not seen for years, the son they can scarcely remember. They know they will face many hazards—some strange and otherworldly—but they cannot foresee how their journey will reveal to them the dark and forgotten corners of their love for each other. Nor can they foresee that they will be joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and a knight—each of them, like Axl and Beatrice, lost in some way to his own past, but drawn inexorably toward the comfort, and the burden, of the fullness of a life’s memories. Sometimes savage, sometimes mysterious, always intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade tells a luminous story about the act of forgetting and the power of memory, a resonant tale of love, vengeance, and war.

Kazuo Ishiguro (Author), David Horovitch (Narrator)

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The Secret Agent

Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent is a tale of anarchism, espionage and terrorism. Our agent, a man named Mr Verloc, minds his own business while he keeps his shop in London’s Soho, alongside his wife, who attends to her aged mother and disabled brother. Their lives are turned upside down when Verloc is reluctantly employed to plant a bomb and destroy an observatory in London. What was once the perfect bomb plot inevitably turns awry and Verloc, his family and his associates are forced to face the consequences. Conrad’s later political novel bears all the hallmarks of his captivating style: The Secret Agent brims with melodious and poetic language, alongside crystal- clear psychological insights that could only be the work of a uniquely gifted storyteller.

Joseph Conrad (Author), David Horovitch (Narrator)

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Metamorphoses

The Metamorphoses, by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC-AD 17) has, over the centuries, been the most popular and influential work from our classical tradition. This extraordinary collection of some 250 Greek and Roman myths and folk tales has always been a popular favourite and has decisively shaped western art and literature from the moment it was completed in AD 8. The stories are particularly vivid when read by David Horovitch in this new lively verse translation by Ian Johnston.

Ovid (Author), David Horovitch (Narrator)

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Bar Mitzvah Boy

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Jack Rosenthal's award-winning television play, starring Hugo Raine. At the tender age of thirteen Eliot Green is about to become a man - in the Jewish religion at least. In synagogue, in front of the whole congregation, he will read and sing in Hebrew from the Torah (the Hebrew scrolls) - this after a year of intensive tuition. Later he will enjoy receiving gifts from relatives and friends as he celebrates with them at his Bar Mitzvah party. All eyes are on Eliot as he is called up in synagogue for his big moment This play along with many others established the late Jack Rosenthal as one of Britain's best loved television writers. A master at creating characters that you could recognise and empathise with, his plays were always sharp and finely tuned with a rich helping of humour. With a star cast including Tracy-Ann Oberman, David Horovitch, Andrew Sachs and Susannah Wise, this new version of Bar Mitzvah Boy is specially adapted for radio by Jack Rosenthal's daughter, the playwright Amy Rosenthal, and is produced by David Ian Neville.

Jack Rosenthal (Author), Andrew Sachs, David Horovitch, Hugo Raine, Susannah Wise, Tracy-Ann Oberman (Narrator)

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Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad (Author), David Horovitch, Malcolm Blackmoor, Nicolas Soames (Narrator)

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The Leopard

Elegiac, bittersweet and profoundly moving, The Leopard chronicles the turbulent transformation of the Risorgimento, in the period of Italian Unification. The waning feudal authority of the elegant and stately Prince of Salina is pitted against the materialistic cunning of Don Calogero, in Tomasi's magnificently descriptive memorial to a dying age. Tomasi's award-winning, semi-autobiographical book became the best-selling novel in Italian history, and is now considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century fiction. It tells an age-old tale of the conflict between old and new, ancient and modern, reflecting bitterly on the inevitability and cruelty of change.

Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (Author), David Horovitch (Narrator)

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The Good Soldier Svejk

Jaroslav HaÅ¡ek's world-famous satirical farce The Good Soldier Å vejk has been translated into over sixty languages, and is one of the best-known Czech works ever published. A soldier in the First World War who never actually sees any combat, Josef Å vejk is The Good Soldier's awkward protagonist - and none of the other characters can quite decide whether his bumbling efforts to get to the front are genuine or not. Often portrayed as one of the first anti-war novels, HaÅ¡ek's classic satire is a tour-de-force of modernist writing, influencing later writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner, and Joseph Heller.

Jaroslav Hasek (Author), David Horovitch, JD Evans (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by David Horovitch