Tales Grotesque and Curious: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Tales Grotesque and Curious, credited to Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 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 Tales Grotesque and Curious by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. (Translated by Glenn William Shaw.) Read in English by Ben Tucker. Here collected are eleven of the over 200 stories that Ryūnosuke Akutagawa wrote during his all-too-brief lifetime and give a sample of the odd and quirky world in which he dwells. Herein can be found eccentric parables such as the tricky demon of "Tobacco and the Devil", the skin-crawling "Lice" and the weird "The Wine Worm". But Akutagawa was also a master of the subtle character study illustrated by such tales as "The Handkerchief" and "Mori Sensei". Also included is "Rashomon", the dark and rain-swept inspiration for the acclaimed Akira Kurosawa film of the same name. (Summary by Ben Tucker)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Tales Grotesque and Curious
• Author credits: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 12
• Listed recording duration: 3:05:25

Catalogue topics

• short stories
• Japanese
• rashomon

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 12:03
2. 01 - Tobacco and the Devil — 16:18
3. 02 - The Nose — 16:25
4. 03 - The Handkerchief — 19:07
5. 04 - Rashomon — 15:28
6. 05 - Lice — 11:39
7. 06 - The Spider's Thread — 6:57
8. 07 - The Wine Worm — 18:16
9. 08 - The Badger — 6:45
10. 09 - The Ball — 14:02
11. 10 - The Pipe — 17:33
12. 11 - Mori Sensei — 30:52

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

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.