The Rover
About this audiobook
As the Revolution rages in France, a seafarer named Peyrol, a master-gunner in the French republican navy, pirate, and for nearly fifty years “rover of the outer seas,” comes to the end of a lifetime lived on the seas and seeks refuge in a remote farmhouse on the French Riviera. As he attempts to settle into a peaceful existence, Peyrol struggles to redefine himself and returns to the sea for one final voyage.
The Rover is the last complete novel written by Joseph Conrad, and was published in 1923 shortly before his death. Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene:
Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please
This also became Conrad’s epitaph.
About the author
Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born in 1857 in the Russian part of Poland. His parents were punished for their Polish nationalist activities, and the family was exiled to northern Russia. At age twelve, after both of his parents had died of tuberculosis, he was sent to live with his uncle in Switzerland. During his youth he attended schools in Krakow, was involved in arms smuggling for the Carlist cause in Spain, and joined the French merchant marine. He continued his naval career for sixteen years in the British merchant navy, and in 1886, he commanded his own ship. In that same year, he became a British citizen and changed his name to Joseph Conrad. He sailed to many parts of the world, including Australia, the West Indies, South America, and the Congo River. It was during theses long journeys that he started to write. At age thirty-six, he ended his sea career, devoted himself entirely to literature, and settled in England. Two years later, he married an Englishwoman, by whom he had two sons. Despite the immediate critical recognition of his major novels, they did not sell well. The family lived in relative poverty until the commercial success of Chance in 1913. Having finally received acclaim, he was offered a knighthood in 1923, which he declined. Conrad died of a heart attack one year later.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
Claire Bloom gained international fame in 1951 with her screen debut in Charles Chaplin’s motion picture Limelight. Among her many memorable films are Richard III, The Haunting, Look Back in Anger, and A Doll’s House.
