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Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Dreyer, and Robert Bresson. Was she a divinely inspired saint? A schizophrenic? A demonically possessed heretic, as her persecutors and captors tried to prove? Every era must retell and reimagine the Maid of Orleans's extraordinary story in its own way, and in Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, the superb novelist and memoirist Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time—a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage, and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.
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“Narrator Cassandra Campbell has a strong, assured voice that transforms the work from a basic history into an intriguing journey of faith and adventure. She reads at an unhurried pace and is careful to speak every word clearly, enabling listeners to become engrossed in the story. Campbell is just as at home with French as she is with English, and she brings a certain verve to the battle scenes and descriptions of Joan’s miracles. The result is a fresh interpretation that deserves to be heard.”
— AudioFile
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“A passionate portrait…Harrison superbly teases out the politics and paradoxes of the Maid of Orleans’ wildly improbable saga, shedding fresh light on her visionary faith and ultimate sacrifice.”
— Elle -
"[Harrison] awes us with her incisive intelligence, her fierce curiosity, her literary prowess. These qualities, along with years of meticulous research, are on stunning display in Harrison’s latest work of nonfiction, which focuses, fittingly, on two aspects of the cross-dressing teenaged warrior: her sanity and her sexuality. Harrison sets the scene, painting a layered portrait not only of Joan’s life but of her times.”
— Boston Globe -
“Most people know the outline of Joan’s story and remember that it ends badly for her, at a stake in the marketplace at Rouen. Harrison’s book helps us see how it came to that. It goes beyond that to show how her true story morphed with each retelling through the centuries, by such luminaries as Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Cecil B. DeMille. In Harrison’s telling, Joan loses her mythic accessories, but the unadorned truth is more than enough.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune -
“Vividly detailed and historically grounded. Casting a modern eye on a medieval legend, [Harrison] is able to breathe new life into the girl, the warrior, the messenger from God, and the saint. In addition to Joan’s early years and her fiery path to battle, Harrison also includes Joan’s trials, execution, and canonization in the compulsively readable narrative.”
— Booklist -
“The versatile Harrison—novelist, biographer, memoirist, and true-crime writer—becomes the most recent in a long list of authors to tell the story of the unusual warrior…Harrison joins the psychobiography school of life writing, doing so with memorable writing and an energetic approach.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Awards
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An AudioFile Editors’ Pick in Biography for November 2014
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An Elle Magazine Pick for November 2014
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About Kathryn Harrison
Kathryn Harrison has written the novels Thicker Than Water, Exposure, Poison, The Binding Chair, The Seal Wife, Envy, and Enchantments. Her autobiographical work includes The Kiss, Seeking Rapture, The Road to Santiago, The Mother Knot, and True Crimes. She has written two biographies, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Joan of Arc, and a book of true crime, While They Slept.
About Cassandra Campbell
Cassandra Campbell has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and the prestigious Odyssey Award for narration. She was been named a “Best Voice” by AudioFile magazine and in 2018 was inducted in Audible’s inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame.