Possession

23 hrs. 17 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author A.S. Byatt

Narrator Kirill Petrov

“The Living Thing” is the second novel of “The Frederica Quartet,” considered perhaps the foremost work of the chivalric lady of the Order of the British Empire Antonia Susan Byatt. The tetralogy was written over a quarter of a century, and its plot spans the same length of time as well: the first two novels were released even before the international bestseller Booker Prize winner “Possession,” and the third and fourth—after. Thus, Frederica Potter begins studying at Cambridge, ravenously hungry for knowledge—for an independent, adult life—for love—exactly at the moment when traditionally isolated Britain receives a massive inoculation of European culture and begins to change irreversibly. While her older sister Stephanie sacrifices education and an academic career for the family, and her younger brother Marcus recovers from a nervous breakdown, Frederica—unlike Monnet and Mallarmé, who insisted on “the happiness of gradually guessing the subject”—prefers to call things by their proper names. And neither Frederica nor Stephanie nor Marcus has any idea what tragedy awaits them all in the future…

1. The Virgin in the Garden (narrated by Kirill Petrov) 2. Possession