Author: James Joyce
Narrator: John Telfer
Unabridged: 14 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 11/01/2010
Categories: Fiction, Classic, Literary Fiction, Short Stories
James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its highly controversial successor Finnegans Wake, as well as the short-story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
John Telfer, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor best known for playing the character of Willy Pettit in five seasons of Bergerac. He has appeared many times in various television dramas, while his parallel theatrical career has involved him in leading roles at the Bristol Old Vic, the Royal National Theatre, the Old Vic in London, and many regional theaters. He has made hundreds of radio broadcasts, and he plays the part of Alan, the vicar, in The Archers.
But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. Only the name of Araby suffices to evoke the geography of the dream. Juicy fruit, aromatic spices, sublime fragrances, the intensity of the desert sun, sensual pleasures, the promise of a feast of the sen......more
This is my favourite short story from Joyce’s excellent collection Dubliners because it shows the development of Western to Eastern perceptions in only just a few decades. And, not only that, the narrator grows from his initial state of ignorance and develops as a person, both intellectually and emo......more
“Joyce’s short story “Araby” shows us a Dubliner stumbling over the boggy ground of adolescence…In an evening the narrator has moved from an innocent boy playing in the last light of childhood, to an anguished young man who has come to realize that maturity is not the realization of childhood’s promise, but its loss.…One of those often small but definitive moments, after which life is never quite the same again.” Guardian (London)