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Russka
- The Novel of Russia
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 39 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
Russka is the story of four families who are divided by ethnicity but united in shaping the destiny of Russia. From a single riverside village situated at one of the country’s geographic crossroads, Russia’s Slav peasant origins are influenced by the Greco-Iranian, Khazar, Jewish, and Mongol invasions. Unified by this one place, the many cultures blend to form a rich and varied tapestry.
Rutherfurd’s grand saga is as multifaceted as Russia itself: harsh yet exotic, proud yet fearful of enemies, steeped in ancient superstitions but always seeking to shape the emerging world. Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, and Lenin all play their roles in creating and destroying the land and its people.
In Russka, Edward Rutherfurd has transformed the epic history of a great civilization into a human story of flesh and blood.
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An epic political drama
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By: Jennifer Fallon
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The Memory of Earth
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High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet, to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats...to protect them, most of all, from themselves.
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I keep hoping, but, alas, ...
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The Autobiography of Henry VIII
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Margaret George's novel brings into focus the larger-than-life King Henry VIII, monarch of prodigious appetites for wine, women, and song.
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Perfection!
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The Midwife's Tale
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It is 1644, and Parliament’s armies have risen against the King and laid siege to the city of York. Even as the city suffers at the rebels’ hands, midwife Bridget Hodgson becomes embroiled in a different sort of rebellion. One of Bridget’s friends, Esther Cooper, has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to be burnt alive. Convinced that her friend is innocent, Bridget sets out to find the real killer.
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Only so so
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Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.
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didn't finish
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By: Upton Sinclair
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USA Today hails Steven Saylor as a “modern master of historical fiction.” Rich in intrigue and period detail, his novels set in ancient Rome have garnered acclaim the world over. A prequel to his epic Roma Sub Rosa series, The Seven Wonders follows series star Gordianus the Finder as an 18-year-old traveling the Mediterranean to witness the wonders of that fabled age. At each stop, the young investigator finds a beguiling mystery that pushes his powers of deduction to the limit.
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Interesting History, Not much of a story
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Archangel
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A tale of the distant future by the author of The Shape-Changer's Wife brings listeners to a world in which the fate of all life rests on the voice of an angel.
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An All-TIme Favorite
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A Place of Greater Safety
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It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden - and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter.
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Disaster
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The Memoirs of Mary, Queen of Scots
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Born Queen of Scotland, married as a young girl to the invalid young King of France, Mary took the reins of the unruly kingdom of Scotland as a young widow and fought to keep her throne. A second marriage to her handsome but dissolute cousin Lord Darnley ended in murder and scandal, while a third marriage to the dashing, commanding Lord Bothwell, the love of her life, gave her joy but widened the scandal and surrounded her with enduring ill repute.
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Fiction being the key word
- By Bonnie-Ann B on 09-25-09
By: Carolly Erickson
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What listeners say about Russka
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Grace
- 04-28-14
Enlightening read for all sorts of perspectives!
Any additional comments?
This is a wonderful listen! Russian history has been a mystery to me and this was a perfect introductory into the history of ethnicity, classes, politics, and religion. I had a list of people to research more after reading this! My only wish is that they offered a visual family tree so I could keep up with who all is related to who. Looks like I'll just have to resort to listening through it again in oder to fully grasp relationships. I plan to listen to this many more times purely for the quality of information! Well done! I highly recommend this!
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- yulia
- 03-24-16
Inaccurate geography of what constitutes Russia
While I haven't finished the book, I need to write my first opinion of this book. While I understand that the book is only based on Russia it's awfully inaccurate in its geography. The author calls every piece of land that Russian boots touched as Russian. The book was written in the late 80s & maps, history books & travel was widely available.
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- Angelyn S. Furst
- 10-22-12
Wonderful Historical Novel
I was so very glad to discover you had added Russka to you Edward Rutherford's books. He is a truly wonderful writer, whose's books are exhaustively researched and very accurate, yet full of characters that make a wonderful novel - Wonderful!
I only wish you'd release his other works "The Forest". "London", etc in a unabridged format. Abridging these novels is almost a sin.
Wonderful book worth both the time and credit!
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21 people found this helpful
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- Christy
- 11-29-12
This book is long in coming
If you could sum up Russka in three words, what would they be?
I waited for this book to come out on Audible for a long time. I read it back in the 90s, and this audio version does not disappoint. I love the mingling of different narratives throughout the history of Russia. It truly helps the reader understand how a Russian mentality is different from our own Western mentality.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
This book is too long to listen to in one sitting. It has different narratives spanning the entire history of Russia, so it is easily broken up into smaller (but still very substantial) parts.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jolene
- 08-11-16
Very interesting I liked it.
I would have liked it more if it had more detail after World War II and more information about the red and white disputes. Although I'd like it more of the 90's it's pretty hard to do that when the book was written in 1991.
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- Dustin Jackson
- 03-15-18
A story that breathes history as easily as air
What made the experience of listening to Russka the most enjoyable?
The novel is sufficiently detailed that, despite the subject matter's alien nature to most readers, it is easy to follow and enjoy. Rutherford's writing style is a joy to experience, and flows smoothly through eons without skipping a beat or weakening in the least. Additionally, Ms. McCaddon is a superb narrator, whose talent with voices and inflection --- as well as her gentle and very relaxing voice --- helps paint a vivid picture with the source she's been given.
What did you like best about this story?
I liked the believability and the (mostly) period-accurate attitudes and experiences of the characters. All too often a historical novel will veer off into platitudes designed to make more comfortable the less-than-palatable portions of the time period. This severely detracts from the quality of the work, as the characters are not allowed to live within their time but, rather, must pay lip service to the views of an author who lives decades, centuries, or even millenia beyond the characters. The characters in Russka act like first-, tenth-, and seventeenth-century Russians: they own serfs, they are devoted to the Tsar and not to democracy, they are religiously narrow; they beat their wives in the fashion of the time; they enjoy bloodsport; and they suffer continual and serious setbacks which are, while not minimized, often placed into cold comparison with the sufferings of their own serfs, to which they do not even consider paying mind. For why would any Russian nobleman pay mind to his serfs; his property? And yet they are characters who live, who experience love and confusion and happiness and joy. What better shows the talent and devotion of an author than his or her ability to write living believable characters, rather than flat, unbelievable propaganda pieces?
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
This book did something for me which few books manage to do: it made me experience genuine emotion. Turmoil, lack of surety, sadness, and even dread. I was invested in the characters and their lives. I wanted things to work out for them. I shook my head and gawked at their bad, disgusting, even evil actions. Yet I understood why they did what they did. At times I felt intense sorrow when bad things happened to the people whose lives I was allowed to look down upon from above, and was permitted in my limited wisdom to judge. I wanted them safe, happy, and successful. And yet, where then would be the story? An age-old conundrum I dare say.
Any additional comments?
I highly recommend this book. It may be a tad long for some, at more than 900 pages, and its complexity might not be attractice to many. It does require a good deal of consideration of past events, and thinking through familial connections. It is easy to get characters confused with other characters, and even (at some points) to wonder why we haven't heard from a specific person in a while, only to realize that we have gone three-hundred years beyond that person's death. This can be quite a shock, if one does not pay attention. Nevertheless, it is an excellent novel, well-written and lacking in little. Believable characters, realistic depicitons of Russian history, and a respect for the intelligence of the reader make this one of my favorite novels.
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- Babs
- 02-27-18
History
I grew up in Western Europe with the reality of the Iron Curtain. For me, child of a family with an intense grudge against the Soviet Union, Russia was bathed in mystery, as if on another planet. I remember the day the Iron Curtain fell. I was making pumpkin soup and did not know what to think about these events that could have been foreseen for a while. Slowly Russian culture became less mysterious throughout the years, beyond Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol etc.... Russka is a welcome reminder of a rich part of our history and a very important culture. I loved it !
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- Dr.J.A.P.
- 01-27-20
Not as good as Ruthfurd's England books
I'm a big fan of Rutherfurd's books about England, so was looking forward to this. I DID learn some things about Russian history, and it was overall ok. Not amazing. The read's performance of the audiobook I listened to is pretty good... but there's something wonky in the sound track. Occasionally it skips and makes odd noises. At first I thought there was something wrong with my speakers, but no it's the sound track of the recording. This is an OLD from the 1990's audiobook apparently that got transferred to digital and something odd happened along the way. That said, it's the ONLY digital version of this book.
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- Milena Pritel
- 09-30-21
I found a deeper understanding of a culture entrenched with mystery
I appreciate the way Rutherford characterizes the culture and personalizes the People of this misunderstood part of our world.
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- Marie L Walker
- 02-21-13
Not Rutherfurd's Best,but very good!
I am a huge fan of Rutherfurd, I love big books and history. I did listen to Russka twice back to back to firmly implant the family names in my mind, and I found I enjoyed it more the second time around. The book gave me a little different view of Russian history than I had. All I can say is, it has to be good to listen to it twice. I found the narration of Wanda McCaddon very good as well. I had enjoyed her in Sarum.
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14 people found this helpful