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Madness

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Madness

By: Roald Dahl
Narrated by: Adrian Scarborough, Andrew Scott, Cillian Murphy, Juliet Stevenson, Stephanie Beacham, Tamsin Greig
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About this listen

From Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail, a newly collected audiobook of his darkest stories, read by Juliet Stevenson, Cillian Murphy, Adrian Scarborough, Tamsin Greig, Stephanie Beacham and Andrew Scott.

'There is a pleasure sure in being mad, which none but madmen know.' Our greatest fear is of losing control - of our lives, but, most of all, of ourselves.

In these 10 unsettling tales of unexpected madness master storyteller Roald Dahl explores what happens when we let go our sanity. Collected together for the first time, stories include 'Edward the Conqueror', 'Katina', 'The Sound Machine', 'An African Story', 'The Landlady', 'Pig', 'The Boy Who Talked With Animals', 'Dip in the Pool', 'William and Mary' and 'The Way Up to Heaven'.

Dahl understood our deepest secrets, desires and fears, and Madness is one of four audiobooks - the rest being Lust, Cruelty and Deception - that explore our hidden selves.

©2016 Roald Dahl (P)2016 Penguin Audio Anthologies & Short Stories Contemporary Contemporary Romance Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Psychological Romance Satire Short Stories Women's Fiction Comedy

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Some of these short stories are absolutely brilliant. Work of a expert to weave such a world you can get lost in, in just a few short words.
I'll not spoil and say which I liked the best.

Mix of Short stories, some okay, others brilliant

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Beautifully and intelligently rendered. Top quality. If all audio books were this good I'd be ecstatic!

Excellent!

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Great little short stories that never go entirely the way you'd think. I didn't much care for the readers portrayal of the characters though, sadly, as they were quite monotone and a bit uninteresting.

Interesting

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A collection of disturbing thinking and gory consequences, a world just around the corner, a point of view without the point, a dangerous corridor of many doors, that hide killers, chancers and the dilutional.

Roald Dahl in his writing for adults is of clearly of a period and very much of a class system that is less felt now, this makes some of his writing seem much older than it is, most of the characters live in a world where money is abundant if not infinite, a world that is much less represented by modern writers.

Good short stories with a twist in the tail and poison in the fangs.

Destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

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An excellent collection of Dahl's short stories, but most are from other volumes. Its worth bearing this in mind before purchasing-I was dussappointed to discover I already had 60-70% of them already

Beware if you already own Dahl collections!!!!

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Great stories but I'm dissapointed that I bought this as I've seen them all as Tales of the Unexpected episodes in the last year or so, on Netflix. They're really early on stories, from the 1970's... Roald Dahl introduces them, sat in a big chair by a fire... I've also heard a couple in another audible book of Dahl short stories that I own.
If you haven't watched the first couple of Tales of the Unexpected series, or you don't have other Dahl books of short stories then definitely go for this as they are good tales with nice little twists in each one.
Narration is great, as you'd expect with the actors involved.

Tales of the Unexpected c.1970s

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Incredible story telling with a sting in the tail. Beautifully narrated and performed. My only criticism (which does not detract) is the lack of space between each story- a production issue. Some short atmospheric music would have given the reader time to adjust, reflect and prepare for the next tale.
Otherwise perfect- great for dog walking!.

Incredible, macabre, great performances

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Too bad that Cillian Murphy has such a boring voice for audiobooks. He may be a great actor but his narration is pretty bad.

More great Ronald Dahl stories

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I Echo another reader’s view... the stories are good. Succinct. But the characters do not come alive at all. They’re all very monotone.

I Echo another reader’s view

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