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Les Miserables

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Les Miserables

By: Victor Hugo
Narrated by: Alan Munro
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About this listen

One of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Jean Valjean, who for decades has been hunted by the ruthless policeman Javert after breaking parole, agrees to care for a factory worker's daughter. The decision changes their lives forever.

Public Domain (P)2015 Trout Lake Media Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Middle Ages
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This is one of the great books of European culture, a gripping story of how good people can be made bad by poverty and social injustice (or sometimes rise above it), set during momentous events of 19th century France. You'd think it would be an honour to narrate it. But unfortunately I found the narration style of this audiobook so weird that I had to abandon this version and am about to start again with a different version of audiobook and different narrator (using another credit - hey ho). . The narrator in this version has a strange, jerky, ponderous delivery of the words, rather as if he is reading them for the first time and isn't quite sure if he's reading them correctly. For dialogue, he moves into a most bizarre quasi-French accent, which sounds absurd (a bit like a joke accent in Dad's Army) and takes all the expression out of what the character is saying. The worst thing is that there are, of course, numerous French names of people, places and even special objects in the book, which the narrator just cannot pronounce. Sometimes he pronounces well known French names just as they are written. For example the philosopher Descartes is pronounced Dezcartz. Often it is difficult to understand which place or historical person he is talking about, because the accent is so weird, so I can't follow the point Hugo is making.. During the conversation of the 4 students, during the 'surprise' party, there is at lest one well-known word of Greek origin which is pronounced equally strangely. I can't believe that this professional narrator was not offered a French voice coach or given some guidance, or that the producers of the audio (Audible) considered his narration acceptable. I've now found another version where the narrator seems from the sample to be competent and am looking forward to cracking on with this fantastic book this evening!

Great book ruined by the narration

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