Odessa

Genius and Death in a City of Dreams

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Odessa

By: Charles King

Narrated by: Andy Caploe

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About this listen

"Rich and riveting, complex and compelling, powerful and poetic." (Peter M. Gianotti, Newsday)

In Odessa, the greatest port on the Black Sea, a dream of cosmopolitan freedom inspired geniuses and innovators, from the writers Alexander Pushkin and Isaac Babel to Zionist activist Vladimir Jabotinsky and immunologist Ilya Mechnikov. Yet here too was death on a staggering scale, as World War II brought the mass murder of Jews carried out by the city's Romanian occupiers. Odessa is an elegy for the vibrant, multicultural tapestry of which a thriving Jewish population formed an essential part, as well as a celebration of the survival of Odessa’s dream in a diaspora reaching all the way to Brighton Beach.

Europe

Judaism

Russia

Dream

Imperialism

Middle East

Holocaust

Soviet Union

Survival

War

Socialism

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This is a fascinating subject and seems like a good book. Sadly it is ruined by the narration. This sounds bearable in the sample, but once you start listening properly the narrator’s habit of putting on exaggerated voices and silly accents whenever someone is quoted quickly becomes unbearable. Skip the recording, buy the book.

Dreadful narration

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