The Book of Kings
About this audiobook
While Europe drifts toward Nazism, four students share an apartment on the Rue de Fleurus. Thackara’s epic novel brilliantly forges the stories of these four men whose lives mirror the large picture of events around the world.
The title alludes to God’s prophetic warning to Samuel about the rise of man-made kings. James Thackara, as John Walsh wrote in the New Yorker, “watches Hitler’s rise from a dozen different perspectives: at Nuremberg rallies, as reported in dinner-table gossip, in close-up appearances at Hindenburg’s side, in letters and rumors of war, in the gradually thickening atmosphere of fright and inevitability.” This is a work of extraordinary vision and range, magnificently fusing myth and the inexorable events of history.
About the author
James Thackara was born in California in 1944 and educated in Buenos Aires, Provence, California, Rome, Switzerland and New England, graduating from Harvard in 1967, where he studied under Peter Taylor, Fredric Jameson, and Joseph Frank. He is the author of two other novels, America’s Children and Ahab’s Daughter.
Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of 27 AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a 12-time Audie Award-winner. He won an Audie in 2006 in the category of Science Fiction and was named the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History and in 2010 Best Voice in Fiction by AudioFile magazine. Vance has been a narrator for the past 25 years, and also worked for many years as a BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London. Some of his best-selling and most praised audiobook performances include Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (an Audie award-winner), Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series (all 21 titles), the new productions of Frank Herbert’s original Dune series, and Rob Gifford’s China Road (an AudioFile 2007 Book of the Year). Vance lives near San Francisco with his wife and two sons.
