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Democracy

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About this listen

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.

As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tragedy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

©1984 Joan Didion (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Political Satire Women's Fiction Fiction Comedy Marriage Tear-jerking

Critic reviews

"A gem...a beautifully composed story that moves with effortless authority and becomes astonishingly moving...Stirring and memorable." ( Newsday)
"Striking, provocative, and brilliantly written." ( The Atlantic)
All stars
Most relevant
Drawn to Didion by her novel Play It As It Lays, I found this and was drawn in.

Enjoyed the tone of the narration but noticed a few odd pronunciations which pulled me out.

Isn’t Adlai pronounced Ad-LYE, not at Ad-LAY?

Masterful, compelling.

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