Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2005 Hugo Awardee) (MP3 @ 64 Kbps) - Susanna Clarke

Written by Susanna Clarke
Read by Simon Prebble
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

SHARE NOTES:

- Not my torrent; I’m just porting it here from TPB (https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/12303455).

- Includes a bonus short story, “John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner”, “a ‘ribald piece of pseudo-folklore’ about John Uskglass, who was a central figure in ‘Jonathan Strange’[,] ‘an anarchic medieval triumph-of-the-peasantry tale’ in which the ‘pagan power of faerie [is] outwitted by the Christian saints’” (cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladies_of_Grace_Adieu_and_Other_Stories#Contents_and_themes).

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“Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the 2004 debut novel of British writer Susanna Clarke. An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of ‘Englishness’ and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. It inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North-South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete.

The narrative draws on various Romantic literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners, the Gothic tale, and the Byronic hero. The novel’s language is a pastiche of 19th-century writing styles, such as those of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Clarke describes the supernatural with careful detail. She supplements the text with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship.

Clarke began writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 1992; ten years later she submitted the manuscript for publication. It was accepted by Bloomsbury and published in September 2004, with illustrations by Portia Rosenberg. Bloomsbury were so sure of its success that they printed 250,000 hardcover copies. The novel was well received by critics and reached number three on the New York Times best-seller list. It was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel.”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_%26_Mr_Norrell

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NARRATION:

“The 32-hour audio book of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was released by Audio Renaissance in 2004. According to a review in The Boston Globe, reader Simon Prebble ‘navigates this production with much assuredness and an array of accents. … Prebble’s full voice is altered to a delicate softness for young ladies of a certain breeding, or tightened to convey the snarkiness often heard in the costive Norrell.’ Prebble interrupts the main text to read the footnotes, announcing them with the word ‘footnote’. According to the AudioFile review, the ‘narrative flow suffers’ because of these interruptions and the reviewer recommends listening ‘with text in hand’. Each note is on its own track, so listeners have the option of skipping them without missing text from the main narrative. When doing public readings, Clarke herself skips the notes.”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_%26_Mr_Norrell#Audio_book