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De Profundis
- Author
- Oscar Wilde
- Narrator
- Simon Russell Beale
- Publisher
- Naxos AudioBooks
- Publish Date
- 1 October 2015
- Run Time
- 4 hours 54 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Classic fiction
What to expect
Critics Review
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Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award De Profundis (From the Depths) is perhaps the least read of Wilde’s major works, and the most heartbreakingly sincere. Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life. The tone is sometimes bitter but always striving toward love as Wilde tries to explain his situation: He wrote the work from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, the lover who bore so much responsibility for the writer’s imprisonment for homosexuality. Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions as Wilde moves from castigating Douglas to discussing suffering as the path to Christian love to expressing his hope of meeting Douglas again after his release. Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves.
D.M.H., AudioFile
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Details
- Author
- Oscar Wilde
- Narrator
- Simon Russell Beale
- Duration
- 4 hours 54 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 October 2015
- ISBN
- 9781843799146
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Naxos AudioBooks
- Genre
- Classic fiction
Synopsis
Written during his time in Reading Gaol, De Profundis is Oscar Wilde’s moving letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde led to the poet’s imprisonment. Here Wilde repudiates Lord Alfred and reflects on his ordeal, acknowledging how the depths of his sorrow have helped liberate him towards a fuller, freer wisdom. Brimming with beautiful passages, De Profundis is a profound and inspiring treatise on the meaning of suffering. With an Introduction Written and Read by Merlin Holland.
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