AudioGo is giving away a free download of the unabridged recording of Brighton Rock (Radio Collection), by Graham Greene, read by Samuel West. The only restriction seems to be that those in the United States cannot get this one... on the check out page, you tell them which region you are in and I played with the selector quite a bit. Mexico, Canada, Palistine and countries and islands I've never heard of all could get it, but not if you pick United States. Even Guam, Puerto Rico and "United States Minor Outlying Islands" are valid regions to get this one for free.Book Description
Originally published in 1938, Graham Greene's chilling expose of violence and gang warfare is a masterpiece of psychological realism and often considered Graham Greene's best novel. It is a fascinating study of evil, sin, and the "appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," a classic of its kind.
Set in Brighton, England, among the criminal rabble, the book depicts the tragic career of a seventeen-year-old boy named Pinkie whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Colleoni. Pinkie is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands.
He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale's avenging angel. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hale's death. For the sheer joy of it she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice.
When finished, the listener is sure to ponder some lofty moral issues to which Greene, a Catholic writer, withholds easy judgments.
Samuel West reads Graham Greene's classic gang war thriller - complete and unabridged. "Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him..." So begins Brighton Rock, in which a gang war rages through the dark underworld of 1930s Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the "dangerous edge of things". "Brighton Rock" has twice been adapted for film. Richard Attenborough starred as Pinkie in the 1947 version, with Sam Riley and Helen Mirren starring in the 2010 release. "The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists...A master of storytelling". ("Times"). "I read "Brighton Rock" when I was about thirteen. One of the first lessons I took from it was that a serious novel could be an exciting novel...". (Ian McEwan). "A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy". ("New York Times").
Click HERE to get the free download.
