The Master

Written by Colm Tóibín

Narrated by Ralph Cosham

“Colm Tóibín’s beautiful, subtle illumination of Henry James’s inner life” (The New York Times) captures the loneliness and hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably fail those he tried to love.

Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of Henry James, a man born into one of America’s first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers.

The emotional intensity of Tóibín's portrait of James is riveting. Time and again, James, a master of psychological subtlety in his fiction, proves blind to his own heart and incapable of reconciling his dreams of passion with his own fragility. With stunningly resonant prose, “The Master is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist: artful, moving, and very beautiful” (The New York Times Book Review).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781797133089

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.

Reviews for The Master

[Jacob Margolin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rich description, a biography from the point of view of the main character. Yet through his thoughts we can deduce intimate things about him that he may only be dimly aware.

[Lizzy Chen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed the voice of the author. He captured not only the life but also the words of Henry James