A while back we brought you the story of LibriVox’s release of an audiobook version of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative Of Arthur Godron Pym. Now, we can tell you about the sequel, written decades later by another author. An antarctic Mystery (AKA An Antarctic Mystery or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields) is a newley released unabridged audiobook read by Esther (AKA Starlite).
Listening to just chapter one, you’ll notice straight away the mention of what sounds like a fictional place. Namely, the “Kerguelen Islands”, a place so remote, so alien, it was the 19th century equivalent of the moon. The Kerguelen archipelago exists, it and a few other remote sub-Antarctic islands fly under French flags and are mostly used as research stations today. But, Kerguelen has a fascinating history. During World War II, Christmas 1940 in fact, a Nazi Kriegsmarine ship, named “Atlantis” visited and there dug “the most southerly German soldier’s grave.” In the 1960s and 1970s Kerguelen was used as an experimental rocket base, sending French and American rockets into suborbital flight. All rumors of secret Chinese or Nazi military bases on Kerguelen are completely unsubstantiated.
Back to the audiobook…
An Antarctic Mystery
By Jules Verne; Read by Esther
Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 8.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 23rd 2007
“Edgar Allan Poe’s telling of Arthur Pym is shown to be true as events come together that bring out clues that help Captain Len Guy trace the fate of his brother’s ship the Jane; the very ship that Arthur Pym was on board at the time of his disappearance. Through the efforts of Mr. Joerling, the crew of the Halbrane is enticed to make the trip to Antarctica to search for any survivors of the Jane.”
You can download the MP3s individually, in one big zipped folder or get the entire novel in podcast form via this feed:
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/an-antarctic-mystery-or-the-sphinx-of-the-ice-fields.xml
Posted by Jesse Willis