Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert torrent

Category: Adults, Classic, Historical Fiction, Literature
Language: English
Keywords: 1800’s France Infidelity Lydia Davis Suicide Tragedy

Written by Gustave Flaubert
Read by Kate Reading
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
Release date: 09-23-10
Publisher: Penguin Audio

The Lydia Davis Translation

Set amid the stifling atmosphere of 19th-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovary is at once an unsparing depiction of a woman’s gradual corruption and a savagely ironic study of human shallowness and stupidity. Neither Emma, nor her lovers, nor Homais, the man of science, escapes the author’s searing castigation, and it is the book’s final profound irony that only Charles, Emma’s oxlike, eternally deceived husband, emerges with a measure of human grace through his stubborn and selfless love.

With its rare formal perfection, Madame Bovary represents, as Frank O’Connor has declared, “possibly the most beautifully written book ever composed; undoubtedly the most beautifully written novel…a book that invites superlatives…the most important novel of the century.”

There are other uploads of this novel on site, this is the requested translation.

“This is one of Kate Reading’s better narrations, and the material could not be more compelling. Translated by Lydia Davis (master short story writer!), the book is both light and tragic, humorous and disturbing, emotional and cerebral. Flaubert is one of the few who can do that..

Reading reads with perfect inflections, making Emma sound airy and “arty,” Charles slow and pitiful, Leon slippery, etc. No silly attempts at trying to sound male; just excellent infusions of the character’s personality into his/her voice to make him/her sound believable”