The Pharaoh and the Priest: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Pharaoh and the Priest, credited to Bolesław Prus, 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 The Pharaoh and the Priest by Bolesław Prus. Pharaoh (Polish: Faraon) is the fourth and last major novel by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus (1847–1912). It was the sole historical novel by an author who had earlier disapproved of historical novels on the ground that they inevitably distort history. Pharaoh has been described by Czesław Miłosz as a "novel on mechanisms of state power and, as such, probably unique in world literature of the nineteenth century.... Prus, in selecting the reign of 'Pharaoh Ramses XIII' in the eleventh century BCE, sought a perspective that was detached from pressures of topicality and censorship. Pharaoh is set in the Egypt of 1087–85 BCE as that country experiences internal stresses and external threats that will culminate in the fall of its Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom. The young protagonist Ramses learns that those who would challenge the powers that be are vulnerable to co-option, seduction, subornation, defamation, intimidation and assassination. Perhaps the chief lesson, belatedly absorbed by Ramses as pharaoh, is the importance, to power, of knowledge. Prus' vision of the fall of an ancient civilization derives some of its power from the author's intimate awareness of the final demise of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, a century before the completion of the novel. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Pharaoh and the Priest
• Author credits: Bolesław Prus
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 73
• Listed recording duration: 26:23:13

Catalogue topics

• historical fiction

Opening tracks: first 24 of 73

1. 00 - Prefatory Remarks and Introduction — 19:17
2. 01 - Chapter I — 25:34
3. 02 - Chapter II — 9:18
4. 03 - Chapter III — 15:01
5. 04 - Chapter IV — 16:01
6. 05 - Chapter V — 13:02
7. 06 - Chapter VI — 18:50
8. 07 - Chapter VII — 12:21
9. 08 - Chapter VIII — 13:50
10. 09 - Chapter IX — 13:23
11. 10 - Chapter X — 13:24
12. 11 - Chapter XI — 23:14
13. 12 - Chapter XII — 21:28
14. 13 - Chapter XIII — 13:40
15. 14 - Chapter XIV — 25:42
16. 15 - Chapter XV — 13:26
17. 16 - Chapter XVI — 16:57
18. 17 - Chapter XVII — 18:56
19. 18 - Chapter XVIII — 26:25
20. 19 - Chapter XIX — 25:23
21. 20 - Chapter XX — 30:39
22. 21 - Chapter XXI — 23:23
23. 22 - Chapter XXII — 14:47
24. 23 - Chapter XXIII — 16:45

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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.