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In America

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About this listen

National Book Award, Fiction, 2000

The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag's best-selling 1992 novel, retold the love story of Emma Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson with consummate power. In this enthralling audiobook - once again based on a real story - Sontag shows us our own country on the cusp of modernity.

In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travel to California to found a "utopian" commune. Maryna, who has renounced her career, is accompanied by her small son and husband; in her entourage is a rising young writer who is in love with her.

The novel portrays a West that is still largely empty, where white settlers confront native Californians and Asian coolies. The image of America, and of California - as fantasy, as escape, as radical simplification - constantly meets a more complex reality. The commune fails and most of the émigrés go home, but Maryna stays and triumphs on the American stage.

In America is a big, juicy, surprising audiobook - about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, about the world of the theater - that will captivate listeners from the first chapter. It is Sontag's most delicious, most brilliant achievement.

©2000 Susan Sontag (P)2011 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Inspiring

Critic reviews

"A passionate and often radical novel of ideas that affords all the old-fashioned pleasures of a traditional historical novel." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)
"Brave and beautiful.... Susan Sontag has indeed found a story that tells many stories with elan, intelligence, and delight." (The Washington Post Book World)
All stars
Most relevant
Rarely do l give up on a book but this is the one, its difficult to appreciate the content as the narration takes any joy out of the listening process.
The book has an artiface that doesnt appeal to me but l could probably deal with that if l could concentrate on the content rather than the bizarre style of the narrator. Make your own decision but listen carefully first to the sample! I have only given it a 1 as 0 wasnt an option.

Not to be recommended

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