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The Great Fortune

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The Great Fortune

By: Olivia Manning
Narrated by: Harriet Walter
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It was a strange, uncertain world that Harriet entered when she married Guy Pringle. Guy taught English at the university at Bucharest, a city of vivid contrasts, where professional beggars exist alongside the excesses of mid-European royalty and expatriate journalists with a taste for truffles and quails in aspic. Underlying this is a fitful awareness of the proximity of the Nazi threat to a Romania, which is enjoying an uneasy peace.

In this exotic landscape Harriet gets to know her new husband and to wonder at the complexity of the apparently simple man she had married.

©1960 The Estate of Olivia Manning (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Historical Fiction Imperialism
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A fantastic narration - completely brought to life by Harriet Walter. I would thoroughly recommend.

brilliant!

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An original perspective of the developing World War 2 from British Council employed ex pats based in Bucharest.
In a time where the Right is gaining sway across the world this book offers a reminder of how easily human nature happily continues normal life, almost careless that greater forces are about to overshadow normality, culture, pleasure and privilege.
The portrayal of Harriet and Guy’s marriage is full of feeling without melodrama, and subtlety without restraint.
Harriet Walter’s performance is impeccable. Her attention to pronunciation peerless.
I can’t wait for my credit to drop for the next volume!

Stunning exploration of the personal and political

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I could listen to these again and again (and indeed I have). Harriet Walter does justice to these incredible novels with a fabulous, absorbing performance that brings every marvellous character to life. Audible, please please please commission Walter to make a recording of Manning’s follow-up, The Levant Trilogy. Pretty please! *begs*

My favourite audiobooks of all time

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The strength of this book is in the scene setting and descriptive prose. The plot is lengthy without a lot happening and one feels an edit of the story and of the characters might enhance the narrative.

The tension is held by the uncertainty of the advancing war for the displaced community.

There are parallels to be drawn here with today, but the Pringles live in an era without social media and so gossip,rumour and uncertainty replace twitter as the characters gather in cafes and hotels.

The Pringles in their early twenties seem so middle-aged. They claim to have poor working class roots but seem like middle aged, upper middle class opinionated toffs abroad to me. I find it difficult to care about them.

The narration is superb. The male voices are particularly well done! There are many characters which the narrator creates with subtlety , and uses the dialect of the period.


Wonderful scene setting

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Absolute gem of a book, and hopefully series. If WW2 is your thing, then listening to this novel, which provides a different perspective on the unfolding of events outside of the allied territory, will no doubt be greatly rewarding. Great characters, well read - up there with the chamomile lawn and maybe beyond it.

WW2 royalty

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