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Comrade Koba: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A tight, captivating story of a naïve child’s encounters with a Soviet dictator, the twentieth novel by Robert Littell
After the sudden death of his nuclear physicist father and the arrest of his mother during the Stalinist purge of Jewish doctors, young Leon Rozental—intellectually precocious and possessing a disarming candor—is hiding from the NKVD in the secret rooms of the House on the Embankment, a large building in Moscow where many Soviet officials and apparatchiks live and work. One day after following a passageway, Leon meets Koba, an old man whose apartment is protected by several guards. Koba is a high-ranking Soviet officer with troubling insight into the thoughts and machinations of Comrade Stalin.
Through encounters between a naive boy and a paranoid tyrant, Robert Littell creates in Comrade Koba a nuanced portrayal of the Soviet dictator, showing his human side and his simultaneous total disregard for and ignorance of the suffering he inflicted on the Russian people. The charm and spontaneity of young Leon make him an irresistible character—and not unlike Holden Caulfield, whom he admits to identifying with—caught in the spider’s web of the story woven by this enigmatic old man.
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“Narrator Andrew Eiden presents this fascinating, if slow moving, audiobook with particular attention to the dialogue that shows the trust and understanding of the boy. Narrator Rachel Jacobs shows a wide range of skills while conjuring the voices of Russian women.”
— AudioFile
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“Comrade Koba balances youthful innocence against infirmity and world-weariness with warmth, humor, and insight.”
— Historical Novel Society -
“A capstone to Littell’s career, his decades-long quest to understand the origins of the Cold War, the nature of spying, and his own reckoning with Jewish identity and assimilation.”
— InsideHook -
“In this short but compelling novel, Littell uses the interplay between a disarmingly discerning if naive boy and a tortured, self-justifying dictator to expose a tragic slice of muddled humanity behind the gray monolith of Stalinist Russia.”
— Booklist
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A Crime Reads Pick of Most Anticipated Novels of Fall
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About Robert Littell
Robert Littell has written over twenty novels, including A Plague on Both Your Houses. A former naval officer and later a Newsweek journalist specializing in the Soviet Union, he also wrote For the Future of Israel (in collaboration with Shimon Peres), The Revolutionist, and Mother Russia. His novel The Amateur was made into a feature film, his novel Legends became a television series, and his New York Times bestselling novel The Company was adapted into a miniseries. He has been awarded the UK’s prestigious Gold Dagger and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his fiction. Littell makes his home in France.
About the Narrators
Andrew Eiden, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor and voice artist. He has been acting since the age of four, working at regional theaters including La Mirada Theatre, the Glendale Center Theatre, and the Pasadena Playhouse. He has starred in dozens of national commercials, guest-spotted on numerous television shows, and has been a series regular on three programs: Discovery Channel’s Outward Bound, Disney Channel’s Movie Surfers, and most notably ABC’s Complete Savages
Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW) is the world’s largest publisher of children’s books, magazines, and apps, with over 700 million products sold each year. DPW consists of an extensive worldwide books and magazines licensing structure as well as vertically integrated publishing imprints, including Disney-Hyperion and Disney Press in the US and Disney Libri in Italy. DPW’s digital products include bestselling e-book titles and award-winning original apps. Disney English is DPW’s English language learning business, which includes learning centers in China and a worldwide retail-licensing program. Headquartered in Glendale, California, DPW publishes books, magazines, and digital products in 85 countries in 75 languages. For more information visit www.disneypublishing.com.