Listen free for 30 days
-
Flights
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $26.22
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Winner of the Man Booker International Prize
National Book Award Finalist for Translated Literature
A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." (Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time)
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." (Washington Post)
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration.
Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. "Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going?" we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer.
You may also enjoy...
-
A Ladder to the Sky
- A Novel
- Written by: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant, Richard Cordery, Nina Sosanya, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent - but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war.
-
-
Amazing voice talent
- By Michael Bates on 2019-05-02
Written by: John Boyne
-
The Book of Longings
- A Novel
- Written by: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò, Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything.
-
-
Breathtakingly rich, nuanced and interesting
- By Jackie Greenizan on 2020-05-10
Written by: Sue Monk Kidd
-
Transcendent Kingdom
- A novel
- Written by: Yaa Gyasi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
-
-
Heavy but masterful
- By Anynomous on 2021-10-02
Written by: Yaa Gyasi
-
Ithaca
- Written by: Claire North
- Narrated by: Catrin Walker-Booth
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the island of Ithaca. None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom. Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus. While he lived, her position was secure. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door. No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus' empty throne—not yet.
-
-
Looking forward to the next installment
- By Linda in Nepean, Canada on 2023-03-02
Written by: Claire North
-
Trespasses
- A Novel
- Written by: Louise Kennedy
- Narrated by: Brid Brennan
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment—Michael is not only Protestant but older and married—Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites.
-
-
Struggled
- By Anonymous User on 2024-07-07
Written by: Louise Kennedy
-
The Memory Police
- A Novel
- Written by: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
-
-
Dystopian? Possibly
- By Sandi on 2020-03-19
Written by: Yoko Ogawa, and others
-
A Ladder to the Sky
- A Novel
- Written by: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Richard E. Grant, Richard Cordery, Nina Sosanya, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent - but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war.
-
-
Amazing voice talent
- By Michael Bates on 2019-05-02
Written by: John Boyne
-
The Book of Longings
- A Novel
- Written by: Sue Monk Kidd
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò, Sue Monk Kidd
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything.
-
-
Breathtakingly rich, nuanced and interesting
- By Jackie Greenizan on 2020-05-10
Written by: Sue Monk Kidd
-
Transcendent Kingdom
- A novel
- Written by: Yaa Gyasi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
-
-
Heavy but masterful
- By Anynomous on 2021-10-02
Written by: Yaa Gyasi
-
Ithaca
- Written by: Claire North
- Narrated by: Catrin Walker-Booth
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the island of Ithaca. None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom. Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus. While he lived, her position was secure. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door. No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus' empty throne—not yet.
-
-
Looking forward to the next installment
- By Linda in Nepean, Canada on 2023-03-02
Written by: Claire North
-
Trespasses
- A Novel
- Written by: Louise Kennedy
- Narrated by: Brid Brennan
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school; at night she fills in at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment—Michael is not only Protestant but older and married—Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites.
-
-
Struggled
- By Anonymous User on 2024-07-07
Written by: Louise Kennedy
-
The Memory Police
- A Novel
- Written by: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
-
-
Dystopian? Possibly
- By Sandi on 2020-03-19
Written by: Yoko Ogawa, and others
-
Killing Commendatore
- A Novel
- Written by: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator, Ted Goossen - translator
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 28 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Killing Commendatore, a 30-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna.
-
-
Adore Murakami but Kirby was annoying
- By Team Awesomeness on 2019-09-09
Written by: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
Erasure
- A Novel
- Written by: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days."
-
-
This really works as an audiobook.
- By Amazon Customer on 2024-03-22
Written by: Percival Everett
-
The Cemetery of Untold Stories
- Written by: Julia Alvarez
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and revisions, and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
-
-
Creative and fresh
- By Joan M on 2024-08-16
Written by: Julia Alvarez
-
I'll Be You
- A Novel
- Written by: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Kate Rudd
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach.
-
-
Liked the style
- By Tesss on 2024-06-26
Written by: Janelle Brown
-
The Books of Jacob
- A Novel
- Written by: Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft - translator
- Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gilli Messer
- Length: 35 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-18th century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
-
-
Too long
- By YNM Toronto on 2022-05-27
Written by: Olga Tokarczuk, and others
-
Butter Honey Pig Bread
- Written by: Francesca Ekwuyasi
- Narrated by: Amaka Umeh
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Francesca Ekwuyasi’s debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.
-
-
a feast that I did not want to end
- By Amazon Customer on 2021-04-10
Written by: Francesca Ekwuyasi
What the critics say
"What’s in a novel? This Man Booker International Prize winner reads like a rigorous response to that question in the best, most edifying (and maddening) way…Magnificently translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft, Flights has the scattered intimate quality of a personal diary, its magic wedded to its singularity. It’s an unexpected, funny journey into that most elusive of places - the human condition." (Entertainment Weekly)
“A revelation … Flights is a witty, imaginative, hard-to-classify work that is in the broadest sense about travel…. In this risky, restlessly mercurial book, Tokarczuk has found a way of turning…philosophy into writing that doesn't just take flight but soars.” (NPR’s “Fresh Air”)
“A beautifully fragmented look at man’s longing for permanence...ambitious and complex.” (Washington Post)
“It’s a busy, beautiful vexation, this novel, a quiver full of fables of pilgrims and pilgrimages, and the reasons - the hidden, the brave, the foolhardy - we venture forth into the world …In Jennifer Croft’s assured translation, each self-enclosed account is tightly conceived and elegantly modulated, the language balletic, unforced.” (The New York Times)
What listeners say about Flights
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jaimie
- 2021-06-20
OK
At times, the story lines were absolutely riveting and at other times, I was lost and uninterested. Overall, it was an interesting listen and yet with so many unanswered questions and details that lead nowhere, the ending fell flat.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ghazal Hemmati
- 2020-02-16
No regrets but not impressed either.
I always read a novel/short story by a contemporary writer in between classic masterpieces, and therefore I’m quite a difficult reader to impress as such true masters as Joyce and Proust set the bar too high. That’s why I could not give Flights more than 3 stars. The book consists of 118 chapters ranging from mostly a few-min audios to few 1-hour ones.
I found a few chapters very interesting but the rest were mostly prosaic.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 2021-04-14
Extraordinary
The book reveals an extraordinary knowledge about the World in general and a really deep research on the themes considered in the book. Absolutely love it. I have previously read the book in Polish Bieguni and in English Flights. Translation is amazingly sensible.Thank you for letting me listen to it . i have refreshed my attachment to the book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Roger Perrault
- 2019-02-13
Fabulous story
A new author for me. I can see why she won the International Booker prize. Reminds me of Lincoln in the Bardo. Disjointed tales that all come together in the end.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Noldo
- 2023-02-20
The stream of author's conscience.
Narrator was great and performed fabulous reading that flashes of author's conscience. The author doesn't like Christian culture and same can be seen when she writes about Poland and everything what is connected to that country. She prefers everything which she doesn't understand and which doesn't have Latin roots.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!