Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Indignation

  • By: Philip Roth
  • Narrated by: Ray Chase
  • Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (131 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Indignation cover art

Indignation

By: Philip Roth
Narrated by: Ray Chase
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.00

Buy Now for £13.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Counterlife cover art
Because I Come from a Crazy Family cover art
Ravelstein cover art
Everyman cover art
Invisible Man cover art
The Book of Disquiet cover art
Finding Fish cover art
The Cooked Seed cover art
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot cover art
August: Osage County cover art
A Prayer for Owen Meany cover art
Bittersweet cover art
Wuthering Heights cover art
Dangling Man cover art
The Sharing Knife, Volume 1 cover art
The Color of Water cover art

Summary

In 1951, the second year of the Korean War, a studious, law-abiding, and intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, begins his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hardworking neighborhood butcher, seems to have gone mad - mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees on every corner for his beloved boy. Far from Newark, Marcus has to find his way amid the customs and constrictions of another American world.

Indignation, Philip Roth's 29th book, is a startling departure from the haunted narratives of old age and experience in Roth's recent books and a powerful exploration of a remarkable moment in American history.

©2008 Philip Roth (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about Indignation

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    75
  • 4 Stars
    39
  • 3 Stars
    14
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    93
  • 4 Stars
    21
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    66
  • 4 Stars
    40
  • 3 Stars
    10
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Other people’s weakness can destroy you

just as much as their strength can. Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength."
Philip Roth, Indignation

An amazing little book, full of indignant rage at life's inequities, at the power of small events unravelling entire lives, Especially for the young and their certainty that they have got it.

A masterpiece of how to bring characters to life, with a complex multilayered plot that hides a parable for modern times, where morals and beliefs change faster than ever stripping all value of things we held as certainty or immutable.

A book that leaves you pondering at all the little injustices, that can set a cascade of events in motion that will change it all.

“what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way one’s most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.”
― Philip Roth, Indignation

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing Narrator! Solid period novel

Indignation is a strong rather short novel (223 pages). The first-person protagonist is reminiscent of Holden Caulfield, but a more—well, indignant—version of a post WWII college student. The extra cynicism reflects the difference in the times: for Indignants protagonist, the Korean-war (with its attendant sense of futility) is raging in the background, posing an existential threat to any college student who, due to idealism, has trouble “playing the game”. While Holden Caulfield had trouble with the same game-playing idea, in the period in which Indignation is set, the psychological stakes are higher, as failure to stay in university could result in being drafted and dying in Korea. It is, therefor, no surprise this book has a darker, more psychologically tense voice, and ends up focusing on human folly/despair more desperately than the tone/focus of The Catcher in the Rye. (Sorry! Hard for me not to keep comparing the two books when they are so thick with a similar societal backdrop!)

Excellent story: tight, entertaining, though (appropriately) angry/dark due to the simplistic idealism of the protagonist. Not many laughs, but entertaining.

The voice of the narrator, Ray Chase, is one of the most spot-on, versatile, and compelling I’ve heard yet on Audible! He does different voices outrageously well, and sometimes with a skill that sounds like he overdubbed another speaker. (At other times, he simply lightens or darkens his voice slightly. Subtle, not like he’s trying to make an over-the-top radio play!) I’m definitely going to listen to more books that he narrates. Highly recommended! I

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Another magnificent Bellow

This is a moving potent tale about human beings being noble fools in their aspersions and aspirations. Short, punchy, subtle and rich. A brilliant youth escapes or rejects various unacceptable obligations and winds up… I won’t spoil the story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Sharp, engaging, warm yet sad

Another wonderful quick listen from Audible for an entertaining interlude between your worthy tombs. Enjoyed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Another a Roth triumph

Short but sweet, thoroughly enjoyable. Great characterisation. good story. Great narration. Listen and I doubt you'll be disappointed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

reminiscent of catcher in the rye

a great short (ish) story that will give you JD Salinger vibes. a coming of age story that's peppered with tragic reality.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Has it taken this long?

… for me to become introduced to the words of Philip Roth? I suppose living in the UK and divided by our common language and petty sense of difference it might be not such a surprise.

Roth puts the spotlight our personal and collective sense of self. He calls into question our perceptions of identity and how we are dragged into all manner of bizarre and irrational activities as a consequence of our delusion only visible from the outside.

The story seems ridiculous, petty, opinionated, selfish, and self-absorbed and deeply unpleasant producing results all too predictably disastrous … and then, I realise it is my own story. How silly of me not to realise sooner.

Excellent work, and now I understand a little bit more about how come his brilliance and skill is recognised. My prejudices have been exposed as for why it hadn’t been so with me.

—-
Complementary to the writing is the remarkable performance by the narrator who became the characters in an absorbing way. The tone, pace and intensity of his reading had me laughing and crying and I struggled to separate the story from reality. Absolutely brilliant.

This is my first Phillip Roth and it won’t be my last. Thank you Audible and all those involved.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

First time I've come across a Phillip Roth Book

Enjoyed the writing very much and the story left me intrigued and eager to find out what would happen.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • mr
  • 21-01-22

Good listen

Enjoyed this book and was free!
Short and to the point, no waffling, and a good engrossing story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

surprisingly good

Extremely well read, and an interesting story. Definitely worth listening to. Didn't know what to expect this being the first piece of work that I have listened to by this author but very pleasantly surprised.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!