Aharon Appelfeld has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping.
The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping
Summary
From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author called "one of the greatest writers of the age" (Guardian) comes this story of a Holocaust survivor, wounded in body and spirit, who takes his first steps toward creating a life for himself in the newly established state of Israel. Erwin doesn't remember much about his journey across Europe after the war ended - with good reason. He spent most of it asleep, carried by other survivors as they emerged from their hiding places or were liberated from the camps and traveled by train, by truck, by wagon, or on foot to Naples, where they filled the refugee camps and wondered what was to become of them. As he struggles to stay awake, Erwin becomes part of a group of young boys being trained in both body and mind for their new lives in Palestine. The fog of sleep gradually lifts, and when he and his comrades arrive in Israel, they are assigned to a kibbutz, where they learn how to tend to land and how to speak their new language. But a part of Erwin desperately clings to the past - to memories of his parents and other relatives, to his mother tongue, to the Ukrainian city where he was born - and he knows that who he was is just as important as who he is now becoming. When wounded while on night patrol, Erwin must spend months recovering from multiple surgeries and trying to regain use of his legs. As he exercises his body, he exercises his mind as well, copying passages from the Bible in his newly acquired Hebrew and working up the courage to create his own texts in this language both old and new, hoping to succeed as a writer where his beloved father had failed. With the support of friends and of other survivors, and with the ever-present memory of his mother to spur him on, Erwin takes his first tentative steps with his crutches - and with his pen. Once again Aharon Appelfeld mines heart-wrenching personal experience to create masterful fiction with a universal resonance.
©2017 Aharon Appelfeld (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Suddenly, Love
Summary
Ernst is a gruff seventy-year-old Red Army veteran. Retired, he lives alone and spends his time laboring over his unpublished novels. Irena, in her mid-thirties, has been taking care of Ernst since his surgery two years earlier. Quiet and shy, Irena is in awe of Ernst's intellect. And as the months pass, Ernst comes to depend on the gentle young woman who runs his house. But Ernst's writing gives him no satisfaction, and he is haunted by his Communist past. He seems to lose the will to live. But this is something Irena will not allow. As she becomes an important part of his life, Ernst regains his sense of self and discovers, to his amazement, that Irena is in love with him. And, even more astonishing, he realizes that he is in love with her, too.
©2014 Aharon Appelfeld (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Adam and Thomas
Summary
Adam and Thomas is the story of two nine-year-old Jewish boys who survive World War II by banding together in the forest. They are alone, visited only furtively every few days by Mina, a mercurial girl who herself has found refuge from the war by living with a peasant family. She makes secret journeys and brings the boys parcels of food at her own risk. Adam and Thomas must learn to survive and do. They forage and build a small tree house, although it's more like a bird's nest. Adam's family dog, Miro, manages to find his way to him, to the joy of both boys. Miro brings the warmth of home with him. Echoes of the war are felt in the forest. The boys meet fugitives fleeing for their lives and try to help them. They learn to disappear in moments of danger. And they barely survive winter's harshest weather, but when things seem to be at their worst, a miracle happens.
©2013 Aharon Appelfeld (P)2020 Tantor
To the Edge of Sorrow
Summary
From "fiction's foremost chronicler of the Holocaust" (Philip Roth), here is a haunting novel about an unforgettable group of Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis during World War II. Battling numbing cold, ever-present hunger, and German soldiers determined to hunt them down, four dozen resistance fighters - escapees from a nearby ghetto - hide in a Ukrainian forest, determined to survive the war, sabotage the German war effort, and rescue as many Jews as they can from the trains taking them to concentration camps. Their leader is relentless in his efforts to turn his ragtag band of men and boys into a disciplined force that accomplishes its goals without losing its moral compass. And so when they're not raiding peasants' homes for food and supplies, or training with the weapons taken from the soldiers they have ambushed and killed, the partisans read books of faith and philosophy that they have rescued from abandoned Jewish homes, and they draw strength from the women, the elderly, and the remarkably resilient orphaned children they are protecting. When they hear about the advances being made by the Soviet Army, the partisans prepare for what they know will be a furious attack on their compound by the retreating Germans. In the heartbreaking aftermath, the survivors emerge from the forest to bury their dead, care for their wounded, and grimly confront a world that is surprised by their existence - and profoundly unwelcoming. Narrated by 17-year-old Edmund - a member of the group who maintains his own inner resolve with memories of his parents and their life before the war - this powerful story of Jews who fought back is suffused with the riveting detail that Aharon Appelfeld was uniquely able to bring to his award-winning novels.
©2020 Aharon Appelfeld and Stuart Schoffman (P)2020 Random House Audio