If you enjoy listening to books as audiobooks, it's a great time to be alive. From Rosamund Pike narrating Pride and Prejudice , Jeremy Irons reading Lolita to Meryl Streep narrating Nora Ephron’s Heartburn many prominent actors have signed up for performing their favourite books in unabridged versions. Some, like the British actor Timothy West, have narrated almost the entire work of a single author.
Below, some of the books that have been recommended by experts on Five Books that have been performed as audiobooks by well known actors. Please message us if you come across any others that you enjoy and that we've failed to include: editor@fivebooks.com
The Hobbit
by J R R Tolkien
BAFTA award-winning actor, director and author Andy Serkis expertly narrates JRR Tolkien‘s prelude to the Lord of the Rings epic. Andy Serkis is the narrator on all the original LOTR books (in the UK and US). For listeners who have already seen the films, Andy uses the same characterful, evocative voice for Gollum in the audiobooks.
Narrator: Andy Serkis
Listening time: 10 hours and 24 minutes
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
*** Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 ***
Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, a fictionalised account of the short life of Shakespeare’s son, won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. It’s also read beautifully as an audiobook by Ell Potter.
Narrator: Ell Potter
Listening time: 12 hours and 42 minutes
“It’s a great story, and beautifully told…see how she ensures that Shakespeare’s wife and children are never overshadowed by their father. In less skilled hands, not naming Shakespeare would grate and fail. With Maggie O’Farrell, this not-naming seems effortless and natural. As we said in our judge’s quote, a bravura performance.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2021 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
“When a celebrity narrator can disappear into the book, that’s when it belongs on that small shelf of truly amazing celebrity narrators. And that’s what Tom Hanks does in The Dutch House.” Read more...
The Mirror and the Light
by Hilary Mantel
“His voice is as close as can be to the voice that’s in my head as I write” —Hilary Mantel
The print book of The Mirror and the Light has got rave reviews, but award-winning actor Ben Miles does an amazing job narrating the audiobook. As Hilary Mantel has pointed out, the British actor (who also starred in the Crown) has already played Thomas Cromwell for the Royal Shakespeare Company, in London’s West End and on Broadway: “Ben understands the main character from the inside. His insights from the rehearsal room helped shape the story. He is familiar with how all the characters grow, from first page to last.”
Narrator: Ben Miles
Length: 38 hours and 11 minutes
The Odyssey
by Homer and translated by Emily Wilson
The audiobook of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey is performed by the American actress Claire Danes.
Narrator: Claire Danes
Length: 13 hours and 30 minutes
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
The audiobook version of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is narrated by the legendary Lin-Manuel Miranda and Karen Olivo, who also won a Tony for her role in West Side Story.
Narrator: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Karen Olivo
Length: 9 hours and 54 minutes
The Remains of The Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
*** Winner of the 1989 Booker Prize***
If you’ve never read The Remains of the Day, the audiobook version is highly recommended. British actor and director Dominic West gives a pitch-perfect performance as the narrator of Ishiguro’s hauntingly beautiful, Booker Prize-winning novel; his Mr Stevens, an ageing butler looking back upon his life in service with mounting regret, a carefully-constructed shell of English restraint, within which tempests rage.
Narrator: Dominic West
Length: 7 hours and 5 minutes
“Remains of the Day is such a fantastically insightful study into the British character. This very British butler who doesn’t know what to make of change, being so rigidly adherent to his upbringing and he never gets to realise his true love. It’s all done in flashback so that we meet him going to visit her, the woman he loves, and he’s excited because finally now, after all this time, they might have the chance to be together, and he’s looking back at how he has been hurt by being who he is. And they meet, but there isn’t a love interest and nothing happens and he is sitting on a bench by the sea realising that he’s facing the remains of his day. It’s about missed chances and what the British character does to a person’s emotions. There is this brick wall that they can’t crack through and after a while a bit of the grout wears away and there is a chink to peer through, but it’s too late.” Read more...
The best books on Enduring Love
Riz Khan, Journalist
The Long Take
by Robin Robertson
***Winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction***
The Long Take is the winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018, this powerful and extraordinary novel follows a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, as he goes in search of freedom and repair in post-war America. The audiobook of The Long Take is narrated by Canadian actor Kerry Shale.
Narrator: Kerry Shale
Length: 5 hours and 26 minutes
“Original, innovative and, in our judgement, durable, with writing of such power that you occasionally have to stop to recover. The Long Take is a work of supreme artistry. Walter Scott would have read it and marvelled.” Read more...
The Best of Historical Fiction: The 2019 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
The Order of Time
by Carlo Rovelli
Actor Benedict Cumberbatch expertly narrates physicist Carlo Rovelli’s book The Order of Time. Listen to how this book brings together science, philosophy and art to unravel the mysteries of time.
Narrator: Benedict Cumberbatch
Length: 4hrs and 18 minutes
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
We highly recommend listening to The Bell Jar as an audiobook. Performed by American actress and producer Maggie Gyllenhaal, she captures Esther Greenwood’s intense struggle with mental illness in Sylvia Plath’s devastating semibiographical novel.
Narrator: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Length: 7 hours and 24 minutes
Heartburn
by Nora Ephron
The audiobook of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn is narrated by the American actress Meryl Streep.
Narrator: Meryl Streep
Length: 5 hours and 30 minutes
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
by James Joyce
If you’re new to James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man might be the best place to start. We highly recommend the audiobook. What better way to experience James Joyce’s first novel than hearing Colin Farrell, of In Bruges, dive into Joyce’s streams of consciousness with all the natural musicality of his Irish accent?
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
The audiobook of To the Lighthouse has been performed separately by two great actors: Australian actress Nicole Kidman and British actress Juliet Stevenson. Listening time: 7-8 hours.
The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene
The audiobook of Graham Greene’s 1951 novel about a doomed adulterous affair is read by British actor Colin Firth. It was published to great critical acclaim, with Firth’s reading of The End of the Affair winning the Audie Awards not only for the best audiobook of the year in 2013 but also best solo narration.
Listening time: 6 hours and 28 minutes
Narrator: Colin Firth
Frankenstein (Book)
by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein is fabulous to listen to as an audiobook, performed by the British actor Dan Stevens. Listening time: 8.5 hours.
Collected Ghost Stories
by MR James
MR James’s Ghost Stories are available as an audiobook, read by the legendary British actor Sir Derek Jacobi.
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
We highly recommend the audiobook of To Kill a Mockingbird, read by Academy Award-winning actress Sissy Spacek. Performed in her southern accent (Spacek is from Texas), she gives a warm and emotionally nuanced reading of this poignant American classic.
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
We highly recommend the audiobook of Lolita. Jeremy Irons gave a brilliant performance as Humbert Humbert in the 1997 film of Nabokov’s most controversial work. Here, he reprises the role by narrating the whole novel. Irons’ mellifluous voice amplifies the beauty of Nabokov’s writing, while his reading renders the all-at-once sinister, deluded, and preposterous qualities of the character. A must.
Narrator: Jeremy Irons
Length: 11 hours and 28 minutes
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
The audiobook of Jane Eyre is narrated by the British actress Thandie Newton. Listening time: 19 hours 10 minutes
Barchester Towers
by Anthony Trollope
The audiobook of Barchester Towers is performed by the British actor, Timothy West.
Listening time: 19 hours.
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
The audiobook of Dracula by Bram Stoker is brilliantly narrated by British actors Greg Wise and Saskia Reeves (listening time: 18 hours)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It turns out that the brilliant British actor, Stephen Fry, is a Sherlock Holmes books fan, which means that The Complete Sherlock Holmes is also available as an audiobook. Listening to Fry’s introduction and then Conan Doyle’s stories is a wonderful experience. Our favourite story remains the incredibly scary and mysterious The Hound of the Baskervilles but apparently, according to Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda, it’s important to start with The Study in Scarlet.
Narrator: Stephen Fry
Length: 71 hours and 57 minutes
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby is F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, set during a hedonistic zenith before the Great Depression.
"Gatsby is a book that is, in some ways, ambivalent about glamour and wealth. It entices us with the glamour of the parties and the wonderful material aspects of Gatsby’s life – but it shows that his falling for the false promises of materialism destroys him"—from out interview with Sarah Churchwell on the best books on The Great Gatsby
We also highly recommend the audiobook, in which BAFTA-winning actor Jake Gyllenhaal becomes Nick Carraway, our guide through the glittering yet destructive pull of materialism in pre-Depression New York. He portrays all the ambivalences of Fitzgerald’s narrator, thrown into this world of decadence and obsession, while breathing new life into this endlessly re-readable novel.
Persuasion
by Jane Austen
The audiobook of Persuasion by Jane Austen is narrated by actress Greta Scacchi.
Length: 8 hours and 13 minutes
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale was adapted as a multi-Emmy Award-winning television series starring Elisabeth Moss, who also narrates the audiobook.
Narrators: Elisabeth Moss, Bradley Whitford, Amy Landecker, Ann Dowd
Length: 11 hours and 22 minutes
Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
The Trainspotting audiobook is narrated by the Scottish actor Tam Dean Burn (listening time: 12 hours)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
The audiobook of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is narrated by the British actor, Stephen Fry.
Narrator: Stephen Fry
Length: 5 hours and 51 minutes
“I think it’s the best of them, and it’s wonderful because it reveals what I think is the essential Bond.” Read more...
Ben Macintyre, Journalist
Pride and Prejudice (Book)
by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is available as an audiobook, performed by the English actress Rosamund Pike. Listening time: 11 hours and 35 minutes.
The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
Award-winning actor Robert Powell, who also played Richard Hannay in the brilliant 1978 movie adaptation of The 39 Steps, is the narrator of the audiobook of John Buchan’s 1915 adventure novel (listening time: just under 4 hours).
