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Nightwood

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Nightwood

By: Djuna Barnes, Jeanette Winterson - preface, T. S. Eliot - introduction
Narrated by: Gemma Dawson
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About this listen

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes's strange and sinuous tour de force novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna - a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.

The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction - there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions.

Barnes's depiction of these characters and their relationships has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature.

©1937 Djuna Barnes; preface copyright 2006 by Jeanette Winterson (P)2017 Tantor Fiction Genre Fiction LGBTQIA+ Creators Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction
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One of the best Modernist texts that is read very well by audible. Enjoyable text to read and hear

Thought provoking

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how the doctor was not bludgeoned to death for droning on is beyond me. The similes go down about as well as a fart in a car on a hot summers day with the windows up as you go past a seweage works.

my theory is this is a giant sandbag, you have to read between the lines of recommendation to work out it's all sarcasm on behalf of the reviewers.

the pearl dissolving in a glass of wine is actually poisonous like asbestos in the lungs of a ship worker.

yes it's an early LGBT book but it's dated and has problematic racial views.

absolutely dire twaddle

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