The World's Wife cover art

The World's Wife

An Unforgettable Feminist Poetry Collection

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The World's Wife

By: Carol Ann Duffy DBE
Narrated by: Carol Ann Duffy DBE
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About this listen

This unique collection of poems from the Poet Laureate, filled with her characteristic wit, is a feminist classic and a modern take on age-old mythology.

Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.
The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je t'adore.

Behind every famous man is a great woman – and from the quick-tongued Mrs Darwin to the lascivious Frau Freud, from the adoring Queen Kong to the long-suffering wife of the Devil himself, each one steps from her counterpart's shadow to tell her side of the story in this irresistible collection.

Original, subversive, full of imagination and quicksilver wit, The World's Wife is Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy at her beguiling best.

 European Poetry World Literature Marriage

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Critic reviews

Poignant, thoughtful, funny, rich and accessible (Ruth Padel, Books of the Year)
These thirty poems vibrate with intense colloquialisms, physicality, energy, freshness and cheek. Many of them are very funny... the best are inventive, subversive and written with great rhythmical and rhyming dash
Carol Ann Duffy is a poet of skill, talent and great heart (Erica Wagner)
The World's Wife is a joyous exuberant book of poems about women usually excluded from myth and history
Duffy takes a cheeky, subversive, no-nonsense swipe with a dish clout at the famous men of history and myth. They don't have a chance in hell of dodging her quick-witted wallop as she relays their stories from their spouse's points of view
It sparkes with wit, intelligence and an impressive lightness of touch, while drawing on some weighty emotional experiences: loneliness, jealousy, self-loathing, desire, the fierceness of a mother's love (Christina Patterson)
She reveals the foibles of the great, the ghastly and the ordinary bloke and the sufferings of those closest to them. The result is a melange of history lesson, fairy-tale and modern-day domestic tragedy, with the occasional joke thrown in for good measure. . . Duffy's poetics are flawless - she never misses a beat, her pace is exhilarating, and her language is original and exciting
This book is going to be a hit, and can only consolidate Duffy's position as one of the most widely read British poets of her generation (Robert Crawford)
All stars
Most relevant
This was not for me, others may like it but please listen to the sample first as I didn’t but wished I had.

Not for me

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I found this really hard to listen to due to the monotonous narrator - it was such a shame that such a skilled poet did not bring her poetry to life. I gave up and read the book instead which I really enjoyed

Narrator

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