A Common Story: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Common Story, credited to Ivan Goncharov, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Common Story by Ivan Goncharov. (Translated by Constance Garnett.) Read in English by Expatriate Alexander Fedoritch Adouev is the naïve, pampered son of Anna Pavlovna, a provincial landowner. He decides to go off to Saint Petersburg, not only to make his mark upon society but also to fulfill his two rosy romantic dreams of becoming a great writer and finding a great love. He is taken under the reluctant wing of his uncle, Piotr Ivanitch Adouev, a pragmatic, hard-headed businessman who scorns everything romantic and tries to cure Alexander Fedoritch of his sentimental, youthful illusions. The younger Adouev resists the indoctrinations of the elder, writing prosaic articles about manure and crop rotation for an agricultural journal as a way of supporting himself but spending his nights writing passionate works of poetry and drama. In quest of True Love, he pursues in turn the rustic Sophia, the perfidious Nadinka, the melancholy Julia, the sprightlike Liza, and even (implicitly) the wise and beautiful Lizaveta, who has entered into a loveless marriage with Alexander’s own unsentimental uncle. The great question throughout the novel is whether Alexander can make a life balanced between pragmatism and romanticism, or be sacrificed to one or the other. Not a “superfluous man” in the same sense as Gontcharov’s later famous protagonist Oblomov, Alexander Fedoritch Adouev remains a noteworthy creation, a sympathetic, three-dimensional character in the early years of Russian realism. ( Expatriate)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Common Story
• Author credits: Ivan Goncharov
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 35
• Listed recording duration: 10:36:15

Catalogue topics

• Russian Literature
• realism
• social satire

Opening tracks: first 24 of 35

1. 01 - Preface by Edmund Gosse — 15:42
2. 02 - Chapter 01, pt. 1 — 18:54
3. 03 - Chapter 01, pt. 2 — 17:29
4. 04 - Chapter 01, pt. 3 — 18:40
5. 05 - Chapter 02, pt. 1 — 17:34
6. 06 - Chapter 02, pt. 2 — 17:14
7. 07 - Chapter 02, pt. 3 — 16:27
8. 08 - Chapter 02, pt. 4 — 14:01
9. 09 - Chapter 02, pt. 5 — 16:14
10. 10 - Chapter 03, pt. 1 — 22:11
11. 11 - Chapter 03, pt. 2 — 21:21
12. 12 - Chapter 04, pt. 1 — 13:46
13. 13 - Chapter 04, pt. 2 — 18:58
14. 14 - Chapter 05, pt. 1 — 17:14
15. 15 - Chapter 05, pt. 2 — 16:29
16. 16 - Chapter 05, pt. 3 — 16:01
17. 17 - Chapter 05, pt. 4 — 15:00
18. 18 - Chapter 06, pt 1 — 15:19
19. 19 - Chapter 06, pt. 2 — 20:08
20. 20 - Chapter 07, pt. 1 — 18:38
21. 21 - Chapter 07, pt. 2 — 16:38
22. 22 - Chapter 08 — 25:13
23. 23 - Chapter 09, pt. 1 — 17:14
24. 24 - Chapter 09, pt. 2 — 20:12

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.