Jack Bennett has narrated 2 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is How to Be a Dictator.
How to Be a Dictator
Summary
Bloomsbury presents How to Be a Dictator by Frank Dikötter, read by Jack Bennett. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ceausescu, Mengistu of Ethiopia and Duvalier of Haiti. No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. A tyrant who can compel his own people to acclaim him will last longer. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support. Throughout the 20th century, hundreds of millions of people were condemned to enthusiasm, obliged to hail their leaders even as they were herded down the road to serfdom. In How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikötter returns to eight of the most chillingly effective personality cults of the 20th century. From carefully choreographed parades to the deliberate cultivation of a shroud of mystery through iron censorship, these dictators ceaselessly worked on their own images and encouraged the population at large to glorify them. At a time when democracy is in retreat, are we seeing a revival of the same techniques among some of today’s world leaders? This timely study, told with great narrative verve, examines how a cult takes hold, grows and sustains itself. It places the cult of personality where it belongs: at the very heart of tyranny.
©2019 Frank Dikötter (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Traveller and the Moonlight
Summary
Antal Szerb’s superb novel, originally published in Hungarian in 1937, is now acknowledged as a classic of European literature. The story follows the misadventures of Mihaly as he travels to Italy on honeymoon with his new wife, Erszi. In Venice, he begins to tell her the story of his youth, dominated by his great friendship with the charismatic siblings Tamas and Eva Ulpius, who live in a crumbling mansion in Budapest. From that moment on the marriage begins to fall apart, as it becomes clear that Mihaly can never escape the ghosts of his past. Bewitched by his memories, he sends Erszi back to their hotel while he loses himself in the alleys of Venice, before embarking on a chaotic journey across Italy, searching for Tamas, for Eva, and anyone connected with them. Tragically, Antal Szerb, of Jewish descent, died in a concentration camp aged just 43. He was offered a chance to escape by admirers of his work but chose to die along with the rest of his generation. Peter Hargitai, an expatriate Hungarian poet, author, and academic now resident in Florida, had a meeting with Szerb’s widow in 1988. When he questioned her about the central enigma of the book, the identity of Tamas, and the elusive intertwining of the Ulpius siblings, she replied “Tamas IS Eva”. As a native Hungarian speaker Hargitai brings an expert ear to this new translation, and a focus on the sexual ambiguity of this extraordinary masterpiece. Is it Eva, or is it Tamas, who is the object of Mihaly’s obsession? Mihaly, haunted by his memory of the morbid, erotic games played by Tamas and Eva, with himself as sacrificial victim, searches through a Europe soon to be ravaged by war. Bizarre, surreal and at times macabre, this is a brilliant translation of an exceptional novel Peter Hargitai was born in Budapest, Hungry, in 1947.
©1937 Antal Szerb (P)2021 Antal Szerb