Audio Sample
Oscar Wilde
De Profundis
Read by Simon Russell Beale with Merlin Holland
unabridged
Written during his time in Reading Gaol, De Profundis is Oscar Wilde’s moving letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde led to the poet’s imprisonment. Here Wilde repudiates Lord Alfred and reflects on his ordeal, acknowledging how the depths of his sorrow have helped liberate him towards a fuller, freer wisdom. Brimming with beautiful passages, De Profundis is a profound and inspiring treatise on the meaning of suffering. With an Introduction Written and Read by Merlin Holland.
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5 CDs
Running Time: 4 h 55 m
More product details
ISBN: 978-1-84379-913-9 Digital ISBN: 978-1-84379-914-6 Cat. no.: NA0210 Download size: 75 MB BISAC: FIC004000 Released: October 2015 -
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Reviews
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
De Profundis (From the Depths) is perhaps the least read of Wilde’s major works, and the most heartbreakingly sincere. Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life. The tone is sometimes bitter but always striving toward love as Wilde tries to explain his situation: He wrote the work from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, the lover who bore so much responsibility for the writer’s imprisonment for homosexuality. Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions as Wilde moves from castigating Douglas to discussing suffering as the path to Christian love to expressing his hope of meeting Douglas again after his release. Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves.
D.M.H., AudioFile