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A High Wind in Jamaica
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
Set in the 19th century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn. Narrated largely from the perspective of the children, the supposed innocents are not the only victims of amoral behaviour, but sometimes the perpetrators. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn. Narrated largely from the perspective of the children, the supposed innocents are not the only victims of amoral behaviour, but sometimes the perpetrators. Praised for its atypical and unsettling take on the truth of human nature, Richard Hughes’ classic, first published in 1929, has been called one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and credited with paving the way for other masterworks such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Praised for its atypical and unsettling take on the truth of human nature, Richard Hughes’ classic, first published in 1929, has been called one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and credited with paving the way for other masterworks such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
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The Moviegoer
- By: Walker Percy
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A winner of the National Book Award, The Moviegoer established Walker Percy as an insightful and grimly humorous storyteller. It is the tale of Binx Bolling, a small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a "search" for something more important, some spiritual truth to anchor him.
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Percy's Prose Dances with Grace, Charm and Style
- By Darwin8u on 10-11-12
By: Walker Percy
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I, Claudius
- By: Robert Graves
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is one of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself. Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction.
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Unsurpassed, addictive brilliance
- By Chris on 06-09-09
By: Robert Graves
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A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
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Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Pale Fire
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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An amazing feat for such a unique novel
- By AmazonCustomer on 03-27-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Sheltering Sky
- A Novel
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture—and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence—perhaps even the limits of human life—when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.
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Classic Work of American 20th Century Fiction
- By Christian B. Kaufman on 06-12-24
By: Paul Bowles
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Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
What listeners say about A High Wind in Jamaica
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- Darrell HANSCHEN
- 03-23-24
The first 5 hours are exciting
I loved the beginning and the middle of this book. I didn’t like the ending and didn’t find it consistent with the rest of the book. I also don’t see the resemblance to Lord of the Flies mentioned in the publisher’s description. If you like a rollicking adventure with intrepid children, get this book.
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- David C.
- 08-22-22
Of Hurricanes and Horrible Children
#ahighwindinjamaica is one of those books that, though having never read, I thought I generally understood was was about. I was very wrong.
Based in the 1870's, the story involves the collision between a group of English children being shipped back the United Kingdom after a storm ravages #jamaica and their encounter with a band of Cuban #pirates who encounter their English bound ship. One would be inclined to believe that the children would suffer at the hands of the high seas brigands but proved to be more of a horror to the pirates. #richardhughes certainly took a very different tact in his depiction of the generally hapless nature of pirates, the reality of high seas law where the mere act of piracy was no longer an automatic capital offense, and the tendency of writers to treat children as fragile creatures rather than the resilient and rather thoughtless creatures they can often be. Instead, Hughes treats adults as being much more ignorant and incapable they may wish themselves to be.
My #audible version, excellently read by #michaelmaloney came to my attention due to its position on the #modernlibrarytop100novels but I will be hunting down a hard copy to add to my collection. #readtheworld #readtheworldchallenge #globalreadingchallenge #piratenovel
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1 person found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 01-02-17
Prose that reads like a Child's Fever Dream
"After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances."
-- Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
A shortcut I use when thinking about a novel, and it IS a shortcut, is to imagine fitting the book I've just read within a series of other books, or as a color made from mixing several books together. It is childish, rough, and only gets me part of the way there, but it is a start (even if it is an adolescent start). I also, with a book I am unfamiliar with, try to avoid poisoning the well by reading reviews or opinions about it. I want to come to it clean, fresh, to see it for a moment with my own eyes.
So? What books did I mix for this one? For me it was a combination of Peter Pan, Heart of Darkness, and Lord of the Flies. Yeah. Wrap your head around that. It was, however, more poetic than any of these. The prose was like a fever dream. Some of the scenes in Jamaica were lush and magical. It was told with colors seen from a child's eyes, events were described through the experience of a child. It wasn't just a trick. Hughes mastered this. He didn't condescend to children. He didn't put them on some victorian pedestal. He measured them by age, by experience, and oriented his story accordingly.
The story really is about the loss of innocence (oh, and an earthquake), but as much it is a story about how resilient children are to that loss of innocence (oh, and an alligator). How much children live in the now and wrap that now in myths. Hughes gave the children in this novel the right to be human, to deal with complexity in their own way. I'm still buzzing a bit from how much I really dug this novel. I'm glad I read it and am still surprised I was never exposed to it before.
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19 people found this helpful
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- Dan Harlow
- 07-07-13
One of my favorite novels
Any additional comments?
This is the second time I've read this magical novel and I like it even better this time than I did the first. A lot of what I love is just in the language Hughes uses - for example describing the ocean as a 'tissue of sensitive nerves' - you can feel the languid heat of the tropics, the wetness of everything, the riot of vegetation, the primitive danger of everything all around. This is a novel to just get lost in, to be held captive by like the main characters, so much so that I'm not particularly interested in analyzing the book to death.
I could talk at length about the theme of crumbling institutions (adulthood, piracy, plantations, the church, England), about childhoods that never end (John, through his 'martyrdom', and the pirates through negligence). I could compare it to Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' which is just as dreamlike, or to Peter Pan, or even Don Quixote.
However, I just don't want to pick this one to pieces. I'd rather play the role of Mathias and allow the book to surprise me, trick me, confound me with it's circus of near insanity, instead of turning it into a Margaret that's been violated by a bunch of dirty sailors (academics).
Some books I just want to enjoy and this is one of them.
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11 people found this helpful
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- harringtonhound
- 05-14-12
Before there was Lord of the Flies....
there was A High Wind in Jamaica. Rather than taking over an island, these kids take over a pirate ship...and the pirates are bamboozled. It's not a comic story, but a fascinating character sketch of a 10 year old girl becoming aware of her self and her place in the world and a down-and-out pirate in an age where technology is leaving him behind. Although the story is mostly about 10 year old Emily, there are no heroes and Emily is at once a remarkable and very ordinary child.
This is a very complex story about coming of age in a very complicated world. It is not sugar-coated.
I remember the movie in the 60s with Anthony Quinn and James Coburn. I liked the movie, but honestly the personas of both of those actors were too big to capture the very ordinary human condition of the pirates in the book. It's well worth the read.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Darryl
- 09-05-12
Enjoyable but maybe not top 100 of 20th century
This was on the Modern Library list of top 100 of the 20th century and for the sake of variety I don't mind it being included. the Narrator is good and the story is a bit of a cross between Treasure Island and Pirates of Carribean. It's not quite a swashbuckler but has it's moments; it's more of a character study with a heavy lean on the young girl's growing up and not quite understanding the "adult" world and events around her. It is lighthearted with a serious ending. There is some very nice writing, rather poetic at times that I really liked. Though it involves kids with pirates it's not a children's book per se as there are serious elements.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Daniel
- 03-17-12
Epic adventure story with a dark undercurrent
Colonial Jamaican high sea adventures in late 19th century seen through the eyes of displaced children whose not yet matured mind and rich imagination altered their and others' lives. This well penned classic is hard to categorized and grasp; it has the very construct of an epic adventure, yet deeper, the theme of perverted innocence percolates.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Nikki Richardson
- 01-02-18
weird but wonderful
The music between the chapters are awkward and the reading is a bit difficult but the story is wickedly wonderful.
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- Dupree
- 01-09-12
Unusual story
What did you like best about A High Wind in Jamaica? What did you like least?
Unique pirate story told from viewpoint of kidnapped children. Outstanding job of getting inside the childrens' heads and describing the situations and their feelings.
Would you be willing to try another book from Richard Hughes? Why or why not?
Yes because of his story telling ability and descriptive technique - not too wordy or flowery but accurate.
Which scene was your favorite?
The auction.
Did A High Wind in Jamaica inspire you to do anything?
No.
Any additional comments?
The reader's performance was excellent, fantastic job with the voices and accents. Quite believable.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Peter W. Kalnin
- 08-14-20
Lovely literature about children's imaginations
Powerful adventures for children that are a pleasure to hear. Narration was great but the accompanying classical musical may not be to everyone's tastes. I enjoyed it. Overall, a great tale and well performed.
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1 person found this helpful