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The Great Fortune

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The Great Fortune

By: Olivia Manning
Narrated by: Harriet Walter
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About this listen

 It was a strange, uncertain world that Harriet entered when she married Guy Pringle. Guy taught English at the university at Bucharest, a city of vivid contrasts, where professional beggars exist alongside the excesses of mid-European royalty and expatriate journalists with a taste for truffles and quails in aspic. Underlying this is a fitful awareness of the proximity of the Nazi threat to a Romania, which is enjoying an uneasy peace.

In this exotic landscape Harriet gets to know her new husband and to wonder at the complexity of the apparently simple man she had married.

©1960 The Estate of Olivia Manning (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Historical Fiction Imperialism

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All stars
Most relevant  
The strength of this book is in the scene setting and descriptive prose. The plot is lengthy without a lot happening and one feels an edit of the story and of the characters might enhance the narrative.

The tension is held by the uncertainty of the advancing war for the displaced community.

There are parallels to be drawn here with today, but the Pringles live in an era without social media and so gossip,rumour and uncertainty replace twitter as the characters gather in cafes and hotels.

The Pringles in their early twenties seem so middle-aged. They claim to have poor working class roots but seem like middle aged, upper middle class opinionated toffs abroad to me. I find it difficult to care about them.

The narration is superb. The male voices are particularly well done! There are many characters which the narrator creates with subtlety , and uses the dialect of the period.


Wonderful scene setting

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Absolute gem of a book, and hopefully series. If WW2 is your thing, then listening to this novel, which provides a different perspective on the unfolding of events outside of the allied territory, will no doubt be greatly rewarding. Great characters, well read - up there with the chamomile lawn and maybe beyond it.

WW2 royalty

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This is an interesting book made wonderful by Harriet Walters reading of it she is perfect for all the difficult voices I would never have enjoyed it as much from the written page

Harriet Walter is amazing

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I’d heard of the Balkan Trilogy but had never read the stories or watched them. And I loved it. Vivid depiction of certain elements if Central European life as WW2 started. And Harriet Walter is one of my new favourite audiobook narrators!

What a wonderful discovery

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What did you like most about The Great Fortune?

I recently finished reading Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy, of which this is the first volume and found it to be absorbing and increasingly gripping as the story went on, a real page turner.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Great Fortune?

Apart from the many very well drawn characters, prime amongst them being Guy Pringle, what I found most interesting were the vivid and memorable descriptions of the political and physical backdrop - you really get a feel for the time and place and the tremendous uncertainties which people must have experienced living in a foreign country close to the onset of war.

Which character – as performed by Harriet Walter – was your favourite?

Harriet Walter narrates all three volumes superbly. Her pace and timing are nigh-on perfect and she draws the characters - men and women - with a sure touch, particularly Guy Pringle, his long-suffering wife, Harriet, and the incomparable Prince Yakimov..

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

As I said a real page turner. Indeed, listening to the trilogy inspired me to buy Olivia Manning's continuation of the tale of Guy and Harriet in the "Levant Trilogy" - alas book version - and I thoroughly enjoyed that too. She is a much under-rated writer.

Any additional comments?

Strongly recommended, particularly if you are interested in novels set in Europe just before the outbreak of the second world war.

Absorbing and superbly narrated

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Enjoyed story. interesting period of history. narration was excellent. found the character of Yachimov really irritating though.

great evocation of the period

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Harriet Walter does a brilliant job of making a favourite book (and TV series) even better. Guy Pringle is one of the most memorable and maddening characters in English literature - love him and hate him. I see the next book in the series has just been released. Hope you plan to publish all of them.

Will always love this book

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I really enjoyed listening to this after first reading it some 30 years ago. It is beautifully read. Guy is still annoying, Sophie insufferable and Yakimov as appalling as ever. And yet, coming back to it decades later, I find all the characters more sympathetic. They form a constellation of vulnerabilities, mostly young people caught up in the uncertainties of an unfamiliar country at the start of the Second World War. And there is more to follow, because it is the first of the six books of the Fortunes of War sequence, although at present only the first three ('the Balkan Trilogy') appear to be on Audible.

A constellation of vulnerabilities

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This story is beautifully narrated by Harriet Walter. The lead up to the war is done very well

Wonderful

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i have got through 4 chapters and am still waiting for a plot to develop. The story just lurches from one drinking party to another. Have given up on it now

Boring

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