Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Empire of the Senses: A Novel
    The Empire of the Senses: A Novel
    The Empire of the Senses: A Novel
    Audiobook20 hours

    The Empire of the Senses: A Novel

    Written by Alexis Landau

    Narrated by Christopher Lane

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A sweeping, gorgeously written debut novel of duty to family and country, passion, and blood ties unraveling in the charged political climate of Berlin between the wars.

    “Empire of the Senses is lush, smart, sexy, affecting, interesting, beautifully researched and well made. Spending time in the world of this novel is an absolute pleasure.” —Aimee Bender

    Lev Perlmutter, an assimilated, cultured German Jew, enlists to fight in World War I, leaving behind his gentile wife Josephine and their children, Franz and Vicki. Moving between Lev's and Josephine's viewpoints, Part I of the novel focuses on Lev's experiences on the Eastern Front—both in war and in love—which render his life at home a pale aftermath by comparison. Part II picks up in Berlin in 1927-1928: the Perlmutter children, now young adults, grapple with their own questions—Franz, drawn into the brown shirt movement, struggling with his unexpressed homosexuality; Vicki, seduced by jazz, bobbed hair, and falling in love with a young man who wants to take her to Palestine.

    Unlike most historical novels of this kind, The Empire of the Senses is not about the Holocaust but rather about the brew that led to it, and about why it was unimaginable to ordinary people like Lev and his wife. Plotted with meticulous precision and populated by characters who feel and dream to the fullest, it holds us rapt as the tides of cultural loss and ethnic hatred come to coexist with those of love, passion, and the power of the human spirit.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMar 17, 2015
    ISBN9781501219689
    The Empire of the Senses: A Novel
    Author

    Alexis Landau

    Alexis Landau is a graduate of Vassar College. She received her MFA from Emerson College and her PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. This is her first novel. Alexis lives with her husband and her two children in Santa Monica, California.

    Related to The Empire of the Senses

    Related audiobooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Saboteur Of Auschwitz

      Sep 12, 2019

      Author Colin Rushton Publisher Summersdale Publishers Price £8.99 Released Out now When soldier Arthur Dodd returned to England following VE Day on 8 May 1945, he was carrying a heavy burden that extended beyond the hardships of serving in World Wa

      1 min read

    • Article

      Sins Of My Grandfather

      Feb 21, 2020

      Sins Of My Grandfather
      10 min read

    • Article

      Best-sellers

      Feb 25, 2018

      Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores: ___ Fiction 1."The Great Alone," by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's: $28.99) A family discovers it is in peril after the father, a returning Vietnam War POW,

      1 min read

    • Article

      Women Of Bletchley Part I: The Bombe Operator

      Jan 24, 2019

      Although it was shrouded in secrecy for decades, the codebreaking work of Bletchley Park is now recognised as an extraordinary wartime achievement. Prodigiously talented cryptanalysts devised various methods to decipher Axis communications. This prod

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Audacious Angel Of Auschwitz

      Aug 11, 2021

      The Audacious Angel Of Auschwitz
      8 min read

    • Article

      Life In Wartime: Women Dominate A Quartet Of World War II Novels

      Aug 25, 2021

      The 4 best recent novels set during World War II show the ingenuity of women who put everything on the line to defeat the Nazis.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Glove

      Mar 4, 2024

      The Glove
      8 min read

    • Article

      Death in Yashinovka

      Jun 1, 2022

      This is how I imagine the death of Yahakow Lejb Slomianski—my great-grandfather—in Yashinovka, Poland, on Tuesday, October 3, 1944, at 11:47 p.m. He is alone in the forest. The sun is setting on a frigid evening. At 59, Yahakow Lejb is still tall, al

      8 min read

    • Article

      Cabaret’s Elliot Levey: ‘This Passover, An Exodus Is Happening In Real Time’

      Apr 11, 2022

      This Friday sees the beginning of Passover. It’s the liberation story of the Jewish people: the journey from slavery to freedom. I’m sitting in my dressing room – the “Isherwood room”, named after the writer whose Berlin Stories gave birth to our pro

      4 min read

    • Article

      Winter Sun

      Feb 6, 2020

      Winter Sun
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Girl Who Lived

      Dec 28, 2018

      The Girl Who Lived
      4 min read

    • Article

      Second Language

      Aug 14, 2017

      Second Language
      9 min read

    • Article

      Winter SUN

      Oct 4, 2022

      Winter SUN
      4 min read

    • Article

      Surviving The Straits Of Hell

      Dec 23, 2020

      NINETY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MOSHE HA-ELION proudly ushers me forward to admire the view from his smart fourteenth-floor apartment overlooking the beach in Bat Yam, south of Jaffa. It is late January and the mist is rising over the Mediterranean as if shield

      9 min read

    • Article

      A Gathering In The Kitchen

      Dec 1, 2021

      A Gathering In The Kitchen
      13 min read

    • Article

      In Love And War

      Jun 10, 2021

      April 1943 - Krakow, Poland Irena was bent over her needlework, stitching the frayed seam of her skirt when she heard a single gunshot ring out. She jerked and then scowled. After four years of war, she ought to be used to it. Why, the other night a

      11 min read

    • Article

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • Article

      Venice Peach

      Oct 2, 2023

      1. THE DRESSMAKER AND THE HIDDEN SOLDIER by Doug Gold (A&U) WWII thriller about Kiwi soldier and Greek dressmaker 2. SUMMER FAVOURITES by Vanya Insull (A&U) Recipes from @vj_cooks 3. TE REO KAPEKAPE: Māori Wit and Humour by Hona Black (Oratia) Having

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tough Love

      Oct 30, 2023

      by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) Let’s get right down to it: The In-Between, by Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas, includes some really intense descriptions of rough male-on-male sex. That shouldn’t be a surprise. As a prominent gay wr

      3 min read

    • Article

      'Dunbar' Is A Moving, Brutal And Apt Update Of 'King Lear'

      Oct 5, 2017

      For centuries, Shakespeare's tragedy was too painful for audiences; it was performed with an altered happy ending. But Edward St. Aubyn has never flinched at inflicting pain on his readers.

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Book for the Moment: On Helen Weinzweig’s ‘Basic Black with Pearls’

      Jun 1, 2018

      This post was produced in partnership with Bloom, a literary site that features authors whose first books were published when they were 40 or older. 1. In our current moment, a chorus of “nasty women” has flooded social media with grievances. Unfortu

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Empire of the Senses

    4.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words