The Last Station by Jay Parini audiobook

The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year

By Jay Parini
Read by various narrators

Random House Audio 9780805011760
11.54 Hours • • 1
Format : Digital Download (In Stock)
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    ISBN: 9780739369982

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE A New York Times Notable Book As Leo Tolstoy’s life draws to a tumultuous close, his tempestuous wife and most cunning disciple are locked in a whirlwind battle for the great man’s soul. Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity and the reality of his enormous wealth and thirteen children, Tolstoy dramatically flees his home, only to fall ill at a tiny nearby rail station. The famous (and famously troubled) writer believes he is dying alone, unaware that over a hundred newspapermen camp outside awaiting hourly reports on his condition.   Jay Parini moves deftly between a colorful cast of characters to create a stunning portrait of one of the world’s most treasured authors. Dancing between fact and fiction, The Last Station is a brilliant and moving literary performance.

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Summary

Summary

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE A New York Times Notable Book As Leo Tolstoy’s life draws to a tumultuous close, his tempestuous wife and most cunning disciple are locked in a whirlwind battle for the great man’s soul. Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity and the reality of his enormous wealth and thirteen children, Tolstoy dramatically flees his home, only to fall ill at a tiny nearby rail station. The famous (and famously troubled) writer believes he is dying alone, unaware that over a hundred newspapermen camp outside awaiting hourly reports on his condition.   Jay Parini moves deftly between a colorful cast of characters to create a stunning portrait of one of the world’s most treasured authors. Dancing between fact and fiction, The Last Station is a brilliant and moving literary performance.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

[A] coup of period re-creation. . . . [Parini] is very good at showing how an artist or visionary can be at once idealistic, mundane and incompetently avaricious. —Chicago Tribune 
Tolstoy imagined—and illuminated. —Boston Globe
Poets who write novels are a strange and wonderful breed, in love with language as well as character. In The Last Station, Jay Parini has tackled an awesomely ambitious novel and succeeded brilliantly. —Erica Jong
Jay Parini has written a stylish, beautifully paced and utterly beguiling novel. —The Sunday Times (London)
Entertaining. . . . A three-dimensional portrait of a complex literary figure. . . . Biographers have described the events of Tolstoy’s life in great detail, but none so insightfully and eloquently as Jay Parini in The Last Station. —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An impressively knowing and sensitive performance, a wistful late twentieth-century tribute to the giant conflicts of a more titanic age. —The Observer (London)
A searching view of the last year in the life of the author of War and Peace. . . . A kaleidoscopically rich and skillful novel. —Publishers Weekly
A gem of a historical novel. . . . A novel with a lyric tone that manages to extract excitement from an unlikely subject. —Newark Star-Ledger
The Last Station offers proof that the historical novel has a lot left to say to and about literature. And any novel with as perfectly beautiful a final sentence as this one deserves to be read all the way through. —Philadelphia Inquirer
This wonderful book combines scholarship and sensitive re-creation of a man’s struggle to be true to himself and to others. —Dallas Morning News
A subtle masterpiece. . . . Tolstoy himself would probably have recognized the work of a true artist. —The Times Literary Supplement
Fascinating. . . . Parini has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of Tolstoy. —Los Angeles Times Book Review
Utterly satisfying. . . . A loving and thoughtful rendering of the complex character of Leo Tolstoy. . . . Parini captures marvelously the paradoxical nature of this genius whose mind and body seemed ever to be at war. —Washington Post Book World
One of those rare works of fiction that manages to demonstrate both scrupulous historical research and true originality of voice and perception. . . . What lifts this book high above most historical novels is Jay Parini’s remarkable ability to enter the minds of his characters. —The New York Times Book Review
A powerful story. . . . Witty [and] immensely moving. . . . Parini draws the reader into the tumult of the Tolstoy household. —Christian Science Monitor
Vivid and moving. . . . It is to Jay Parini’s credit that he has been able to flesh out the saga and make it ever new, to give it a shape and resonance we might have thought unimaginable. —Newsday
One of the best historical novels written in the last twenty years. —Gore Vidal
A skillful tapestry. . . . The Last Station illumines the larger than fiction life of a literary giant. —USA Today

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Author

Author Bio: Jay Parini

Author Bio: Jay Parini

Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, Vermont. His six novels also include Benjamin’s Crossing and The Apprentice Lover. His volumes of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. In addition to biographies of Gore Vidal, John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner, he has written a volume of essays on literature and politics, as well as The Art of Teaching. He edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : Digital Download
Runtime: 11.54
Audience: Adult
Language: English

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