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My Ántonia

The Great Plains Trilogy (Book 3)

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What to expect

Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s finest book and one of the outstanding novels of American literature, My Ántonia tells of the life of early American pioneers in Nebraska.

Through Jim Burden’s endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature’s most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride, Ántonia’s desperately homesick father and self-indulgent mother, and the coy Lena Lingard. Holding the pastoral society’s heart, of course, is the bewitching, free-spirited Ántonia.

Infused with a gracious passion for the land, My Ántonia is a deeply moving portrait of an entire community and its way of life.

Critics Review

“No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.”

H. L. Mencken

“Opening the first page and reading it is like tossing a perfect paper nairplane off a cliff and watching it soar. Every time, you’re reassured nthere can be simple beauty in the world.”

Patton Oswalt

“My Ántonia is packed with the feel of the country. A scant paragraph sets you out on the plains, and the breath of the wind that billows the long grass never leaves your face.”

Chicago Daily News

“In Antonia, Willa Cather portrays one of the great women of literature: strong, capable, and honest. My Ántonia is a book to read to children to show them what women can be, or to read—and remind—yourself.”

Erica Bauermeister, 500 Great Books by Women

“Soulful and rich...Nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue.” 

Amazon.com, editorial review

“My Ántonia is one of the best-loved classics of American literature, read by generations of American high school students, with good reason…The structure of the novel is beautifully wrought, the writing and character development excellent. Cummings’ narration is also well-done, with changes in accents and dialects reflecting the adjustment of the characters to their changing lives.”

Kliatt (starred review)

“Willa Cather was born and raised on the Great Plains and her novel stands as a celebration of the landscape and its settlers (specifically Ántonia, the stoic daughter of a struggling Bohemian family)…A clear-eyed salute to the resilience of the human spirit and the innate hardiness of the immigrants who came across the ocean to start afresh in the golden west.”

Guardian (London)
Author Willa Cather
Narrator Jeff Cummings
Series The Great Plains Trilogy
Duration 7 hours and 20 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781481565776
Format Audiobook
Publisher Craig Black
Genre Children’s / Teenage fiction: Classic fiction, Classic fiction, Fiction: general and literary
Availability AU, GB, IE, US

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