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The Great Fire
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Virginia Leishman
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
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The Great Fire
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Summary
National Book Award, Fiction, 2003
This mesmerizing, poetic novel won the 2003 National Book Award for fiction and has earned universal acclaim. Set against the beautiful but tragic landscape of post-World War II Asia, The Great Fire tells a sweeping tale of the search for new beginnings in a world ravaged by tragedy.Thirty-two-year-old war hero Aldred Leith is in Japan to survey the Hiroshima devastation. His close friend and fellow veteran Peter Exley prosecutes Japanese war criminals in Hong Kong. Striving to rebuild lives shattered by war, both men reach critical turning points. Leith falls in love with a precocious and charming 17-year-old girl, while Exley faces a decision that will forever alter his path.
Author Shirley Hazzard's first novel in more than 20 years, The Great Fire is an elegant and beautifully crafted story that resonates long past the final word.
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Critic reviews
"Hazzard combines emotion on a scale we associate with 19th century novels with language that has the freedom and lucid precision of early 20th century modernism." ( Salon.com)
"The purity of her sentences, each one resonant with implication, create an effortless flow. This is a quiet book, but one that carries portents well beyond its time and place, suggesting the disquieting state of our current world." ( Publishers Weekly)
What listeners say about The Great Fire
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- HappyLuckyAlix
- 17-08-12
Wonderful wartime novel and beautifully read
This is a wonderfully written novel which credits the listener with the intelligence to handle complex language and subtle characters. Shirley Hazzard's themes of love, loss and attempts to rebuild broken lives after the second world war are not new, but her ability to write real people (both the main characters and the many secondary ones), create vibrant places and situations and her rich use of language, including a fabulous handling of dialogue lift this far above the ordinary. Virginia Leishman's precise RP suits the language well, but she's versatile enough to deliver accents, song and other languages beautifully too. A fabulous auidobook and one I will go back to many times.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 11-12-20
Life at a higher level.
I love this book more than any other. Beautiful words spoken by a beautiful voice.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Zelide
- 31-05-24
Wonderful writing
Voice. Too ponderous needed a lighter touch to do justice go this masterpiece from Australian author
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- marion delgado
- 05-12-23
Beautifully read
I picked this up after an article in the LRB about the author and really enjoyed it. The reader does an excellent job. The only spoiler is that the cues for the ends of CDs 8 and 9 were not edited out when it was transferred to digital. Shoddy work… surely someone should have checked?
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