Confession time: I don’t listen to everything that we release before publication. When we started, I not only listened to everything but I also produced everything – or virtually everything – for many years. But now, when our new titles often run for 20 hours or more, I simply can’t get through them. I sample them, of course. But for the complete experience, I am always playing catch-up.

And, at the moment, I am playing catch-up with Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, read by David Horovitch which came out early last year.

WHAT A DELIGHT!
Classic comedy, I mused, may not seem as rich a seam as classic tragedy or classic romance. For every Pickwick Papers or Tristram Shandy we have two or three Tess of the d’Urbevilles or A Tale of Two Cities. Or Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary. Is this because comedy is less durable than deeper, richer emotive states engendered by the great epics of love and loss? Does time take its toll more severely – except, perhaps, in drama? After all, Mrs Malaprop can be very funny, even today. And so can Shakespeare’s Mechanicals.

But on the whole, comic novels do not last so well. Within the classics – within so many Dickens! – there are delightful characters that genuinely make you smile or laugh out loud. Then there are the evergreen Bertie Woosters for when the sky is dark, or The Wind in the Willows or Three Men in a Boat or The Diary of a Nobody. And Mark Twain.

Go abroad, however, and there is the added difficult (for English speakers) of translation – another hurdle which often trips up travelers in the genre.

However, if you don’t know it, I urge you to try The Good Soldier Švejk in our world premiere audiobook recording… though those who do know it will need no persuading.

My stepfather was Czech, and even though he spent decades in England, his English was larded with a strong accent. One of our great Christmas treats was to sit by the family fireside (yes! we did!) while Harry Samek from Brno read some of his favourite passages in the glittering Parrott English translation. Švejk pawning the piano to buy schnapps for the chaplain. Švejk doing nefarious deals to acquire dogs (he is a buyer and a seller of dogs) to pass on to his lieutenant or others.

Who is Švejk? The scene is Prague at the outbreak of World War I. The Archduke has been assassinated. Men are being drafted to the front. But not Švejk. He is not quite a glass full; he is an innocent, bumbling (with his smiling, open, honest face) through one scrape after another. Or is he really so innocent?

He is accused of sedition – but did he really traduce the Emperor or the state?

He is accused of being a malingerer – but has he really got rheumatism?

And there I was, only yesterday, on the cross trainer followed by the running machine, followed by some weights, laughing, laughing out loud even. My gym mates started to give me a wide berth. I tell you, laughing on a running machine is a contradiction in terms. And, frankly, dangerous.

But David Horovitch does an absolutely sparkling job. He has Švejk off to a tee. And the myriad of other characters who pop up along the way.

I went to the morning of the recording, produced by Roy McMillan. It was such an important novel from my childhood, I wanted to hear what David would make of it. I was slightly nervous, to tell the truth, because I had my stepfather’s thick Czech accent in my ears, even after all these years.

I need not have worried. From the start it was clear that this great comic book was in perfect hands. Funny, satirical, sardonic, the recording is a genuine pleasure. This is what the audiobook experience is all about for me.

What more could I ask? A classic comedy in a perfect translation read with imagination and real, pure fun. AND, therefore, furthermore, I remain longer in the gym, getting slimmer and fitter. Can’t say the same would be true for Heart of Darkness…

The Merchant of Venice, which we release this month in a new production with Sir Antony Sher as Shylock and Emma Fielding as Portia, is our eleventh Shakespeare title. Actually, we have thirteen Shakespeares, because we also have the remarkable John Gielgud Hamlet and the, I must say, equally remarkable Donmar Warehouse production ofOthello with Chiwetel Ejiofor in the title role and Ewan McGregor as Iago.

We have other dramas as well, including Pygmalion,Oedipus, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Blithe Spirit, and Hedda Gabler (outstanding performances from Juliet Stevensonand Michael Maloney). And, on a regular basis, we are asked for more drama, both classics and more modern plays. Only today, we had a call from a Naxos AudioBooks collector suggesting that we do Sheridan’s The Rivals.

Quite often, when I go to the theatre, I come away thinking about how striking the play would be on audiobook, or that here was a remarkable performance that should be preserved in one form or another. For drama on audiobook can be something very special: the listener is drawn right into the intimacy of theatre, giving an experience which is akin to but different from performance in a playhouse.

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The 2 Naxos Audiobook collections of Plutarch’s lives (NA628912 for Greek; NA630212 for Roman) change Plutarch from dry-and-dusty-author-on-shelf to an exciting and vivid observer of history. In the Greek set, the first disc gives the history of Sparta – and you’ll find out that the Spartan life depicted in the recent movie “300″ wasn’t far off the mark. The section on Brutus and Caesar in the Roman Lives gives sense the Shakespeare’s oft quoted “et tu, Brute” when you find out that Brutus was supposed to have been Caesar’s son, and not just a close friend who had turned to the bad side. No wonder those words carry such shock in those few syllables. 

The structure of Plutarch are parallel lives – instead of just the life of Caesar you also get the parallel lives of his contemporaries and friends - and that helps you to place the historic figures in context and to understand living relationships.

These are the books that authors until modern times were familiar with – and you’ll be surprised at how many concepts you thought you knew the source of actually come from Plutarch in the 1st century. Hear about Pyrrhus (track 129 in Greek Lives) and the true irony of a Pyrrhic victory will surprise you. A great and surprisingly wonderful set of audiobooks!