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    The Osterman Weekend
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    The Osterman Weekend
    Unavailable
    The Osterman Weekend
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Osterman Weekend

    Written by Robert Ludlum

    Narrated by Stephen Hoye

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In Zurich . . . in Moscow . . . in Washington, D.C. . . . the machinery has already been set in motion. In a quiet suburb, an odd assortment of men and women gather for a momentous weekend. At stake is nothing less than the very existence of the United States of America-and, with it, the future of the entire free world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 14, 2012
    ISBN9780449013229
    Unavailable
    The Osterman Weekend
    Author

    Robert Ludlum

    Robert Ludlum (1927-2001) was the author of 25 thriller novels, including The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum--the books on which the international hit movies were based--and The Sigma Protocol. He was also the creator of the Covert-One series. Born in New York City, Ludlum received a B.A. from Wesleyan University, and before becoming an author, he was a United States Marine, a theater actor and producer.

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    Reviews for The Osterman Weekend

    4/5

    2,058 ratings116 reviews

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    • 4/5
      My partner told me about this classic post-apocalyptic novel; I'd not heard of it before. I enjoyed Wyndham's writing style and the way the story unfolded. It's a short read and will possibly make you scared of plants... but the main focus of the book aren't the Triffids but how humans survive in the middle of a disintegrating society. Of course the book shows its age and the attitude towards disability and women is not a very modern one. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this read.
    • 5/5
      Surely, after 1242 reviews, you don't me to add anything?
    • 5/5
      Classic science fiction. Excellent read.
    • 5/5
      A classic doomsday Sci Fi story. John Wyndham's best book.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book.

      The deadly plant life is a sideshow to a study of human society and its fragility / resilience
    • 4/5
      A solid post-apocalyptic science fiction novel with strong anti-war/authoritarian tones.
    • 4/5
      Horror tale about a dystopia where nearly everyone goes blind from watching a spectacular meteorite display. Holds up well and is just as scary now as it was back in the day when I first read it. Also, the original movie is terrific.
    • 4/5
      This book is 60+ years old but really could have been written yesterday. Well meaning botanist creates a new species of plants to be processed into oil for food. His plane, however, crashes and the spores are released into the atmosphere spreading all over England and presumably the rest of the world. These plants, called triffids, are tolerated in everyone's gardens but develop alarming properties of being ambulant and scavengers. Another freak occurrence happens. Green lit objects fall from the sky attracting everyone to view them with drastic results. Everyone (including birds and animals) become blind except for the rare exception.Our hero is one such exception. He wakes up in the hospital bandaged up from eye surgery. He heard everyone exclaiming about the green lights and is a little jealous he can not witness them. However, this morning, no one answers his bell, he hears no one in the hall, indeed no sound from outside either. He is due to have the bandages removed any way so he unwraps himself and finds himself the only sighted person. We follow our hero as he tries to determine the best way to find other sighted people and create a safe place to start civilization over. As one usually discovers in post-apocalyptic stories that events like this bring out the best and worst in people and we see it all.One of the cute, alarming, interesting themes in the story is how some people are convinced that these events spared America and that help was on its way. Being that the book was written in 1951, I am sure that World War II still had an impact on the morale of the English.
    • 4/5
      This classic, post apocalyptic book from the 1950s shows that a story doesn't need 600+ pages or a trilogy in order to be compelling, satisfying and scary. In the '50s authors were very concerned with the nuclear threat and the dangers of science gone wild, and this book fits right in. I have vague memories of having seen and liked the movie long ago. The morning after an unusual light show, ostensibly caused by a comet, most people in the world wake up to discover that they have become blind. Bill, the protagonist, and a few others are spared this fate because they were unable to watch the strange green lights. Bill was a scientist specializing in the study of triffids. These large, flesh eating plants had suddenly appeared worldwide some years ago. They contained a useful oil so they were tolerated, despite the fact that they could walk, had a venomous sting and were possibly sentient. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the survivors have to figure out how to organize and feed themselves. Should those who are sighted help the blind at their own expense? Imagine being blind and trapped in your house by triffids that are ready to attack as soon as you poke your head outside. A lot of issues and many frightening situations are packed into this short book. I liked it a lot.
    • 3/5
      The premise is incredibly strong. Unfortunately, the book's writing is a bit stale, despite the potentially exciting backdrop, but thought-provoking situations help bridge the divide.
    • 1/5
      I don't know where this book gets the wonderful ratings from. A guy wanders around in a post-apocalyptic world and every time he gets into a jam a triffid conveniently pops up and offs the baddies while he escapes. That's really all I got out of it.
    • 2/5
      A bit dated in its gender norms.
    • 3/5
      The first zombie apocalypse novel, from 1951 (triffids=zombies obviously). Blindness, a mysterious plague, and homicidal shrubbery are all carefully deployed to create a tidy world where almost everyone conveniently drops dead and the main existential threat is a faceless enemy that can be killed with impunity. The genre appeals to readers who imagine themselves as tough-minded and rational, able to reorganise society on more sensible lines and loot all the riches of civilisation (with men still in charge of course). These narratives tend to stop before things get really interesting, a generation down the line when stocks of petrol are exhausted, and technical, educated nerds like the reader become less useful. The holocaust here is almost an anti-nuclear one, where the fall is a graceful degradation and the survivors have a clean fresh world to pillage. It must have been an escapist fantasy for a UK recovering from war, still under food rationing (hence the idyllic description of great slabs of bacon). Unfortunately it's encrusted with the attitudes of its time and the occasional lecture from the author.
    • 4/5
      The Day of the Triffids is a book I've meant to read for a long time. Sometime way back when, I forget quite why, Dad told me the basic story -- not with characters, just the basic ideas -- and as an impressionable little daddy's girl of probably about eight years old, it stuck in my mind.

      I actually expected something a bit more trashy than this, after some reviews and comments I read. It's certainly got the seeds (heh) for a lot of horror writing -- Stephen King's work is quite similar in some ways, in The Stand and Cell. It's got some ideas that're creepy as all get out: the lurking triffids, genetic experiments, satellites full of plagues and nukes and god knows what, the return of feudalism...

      In a way, I've read this book before -- nothing that happened really surprised me, because I've read enough post-apocalyptic fiction to have thought about how things would work out if [xyz] happened. It's a reasonably realistic guess at how things would've turned out if this was all the case, I think.

      It's a reasonably compelling read, too. There's a chapter full of back story, which drags a bit, but for the most part it goes along at a pretty good pace, and there's genuine anxiety about whether Bill and Josella will find each other again and so on.
    • 3/5
      romance story a terrible relic of unreconstructed 50s. vague danger from Soviets and from some ethic mix, and the empire-strikes-back element of colonial collapse (england destroyed because the tropics come in) also embarrassing. the horror of collapse, and the opportunistic plants: perfectly realized. worth it, despite all the bad.
    • 5/5
      A terrific "end of the world" story. Reasonably short, and very well written. The one thing that struck me was the similarity between this novel and Seeing by Jose Saramago, which I finished just a few weeks ago.
    • 4/5
      It has been a long time since I first read this and I was interested to see how it would differ in my memory. In the end I was only able to remember how the start went which I think was better as it was a fresh read.

      I think the book was a great look at the breakdown of society but only it's own specific situation. You wouldn't be able to place the results on other post-apocalypse situations due to the presence of the triffids.

      You might be able to make some parallels between triffids and something like zombies but the link is only minimal in that they are both predators to humans but at the same time vastly different in both physical traits and the human mentality to that threat.

      I think the characters in the book faced the threat and future much better than I could envisage modern people handling it. I'd say this is because the book was set in the middle of the 20th century when people weren't as far removed from the how of things as they are now. Mechanics, medicine, food production and other essentials have grown so complex now that the average person knows very little of how it works and how to fix or maintain.

      I really enjoyed reading this, I like that the horror aspect was very downplayed compared to modern survivalist stories and would highly recommend reading it.
    • 3/5
      Written at the beginning of the cold war one could take it to be a metaphor for the threat of weapons development and civilisation on the brink of collapse if such a newfangled weapon were to be released, or one could read it as an enjoyable science fiction novel.I enjoyed this and found the pages turning freely from the beginning, a nice mix of collapse action, survival and mystery. Much much better than the BBC mini series recently made which was based on this book.
    • 4/5
      A classic that doesn't really feel dated at all, even though I'm reading this more than 60 years after it was published. I remember loving John Wyndham's the Chrysalids from when I read it for class in high school, so I was quite looking forward to this.In this book, an unnatural breed of aggressive plants called triffids take over the world after much of the population goes blind after witnessing a strange meteor shower. When it comes to sci-fi premises, I thought it was a very interesting way to bring about the apocalypse. This was great at emphasizing just how thin and fragile the veneer of civilization truly is, and what could happen when it erodes. Description of humanity's efforts to survive along with its propensity to rebuild or run savage brought to mind The Stand, another post-apocalyptic/dystopian novel I recently read. Day of the Triffids preceded it, of course, and I thought it was impressively written.
    • 4/5
      A surprisingly compelling read, this books still resonates today despite all the of the cheesy cinematographic attempts. Although the premise is rather extraordinary, it is recounted with enough sense that it is believable. Most interesting, of course, is the description of social interactions: everything from modes of government to social mores, natural instincts to conditioned reactions, it is a very clever survey of human kind. Definitely a classic.
    • 5/5
      Triffids are walking plants, with a terrible sting. Britain is being invaded by them.
    • 3/5
      Unabridged audio. Remember the days when the post-apocalypse didn't need to have love-triangles or coming-of-age drama? In this English science-fiction, strange lights are observed in the night sky. But when people wake up they can no longer see anything.

      Fortunately for the story, the narrator was in hospital, with his eyes covered by bandages. He can report what's going on - as soon as he takes off the bandages and finds out.
    • 4/5
      One of the reasons I enjoy reading post-apoc books is the aspect of how one survives in a world that has fallen apart. Triffids provided this and more. The book follows a John, a man fortunate to miss out on a great cosmic display of lights due to an injury and thus in one of the rare few who does not go blind. This is the primary disaster, which is quickly followed by the threat of the triffids, over-grown genetically modified walking (yes, you read that right, walking) plants cultivated for economic reasons. John wades through the disaster and meets various groups surviving in its wake along the way.What makes this book more than just a story about the apocalypse is the philosophical bent throughout, as the characters not only survive, but choose how to shape their own survival in a way they can live with. How much should you sacrifice to save others, if you can? Is it better to focus on saving as many people as possible, or only the few who are truly valuable? How do you cultivate hope for the future when there seems to be none? What shape should a new formed society take after a disaster of such epic proportions? What myths do we tell the children who grow up after?Though the triffids at first glance seem ridiculous, exaggerated, Wyndham puts just enough science into their back story to make them probable in society focused on economic gain, and though the date of the book means that some of the portrayals of women are a bit antiquated, Triffids overall is a fascinating and entertaining read.
    • 4/5
      Day of the Triffids is many things. Most are well covered in other reviews. I fist saw the movie 45 or so years ago, and read the book about 40 years ago. It is a fun book to read. That may be somewhat odd to say about a post apocalyptic novel, but the book, while dealing with a serious subject, is not depressing and has enough mystery about the how things will turn out to keep you avidly reading.I think we have generally forgotten the tension that existed in the 1950's - even though it was not all that long ago. Day of the Triffids is definitely a product of the early Cold War and helps remind us how real the possibility of large scale destruction was.
    • 4/5
      Note: There are some spoilers in this review.I've seen this apocalyptic novel referred to as a "cozy catastrophe." It's easy to see why the term cozy would be applied to it. For a large part of the book, the main characters hunker down in an English farmhouse in the lush countryside. The only thing that spoils their pastoral post-apocalyptic life are the hordes of Triffids -- giant, carnivorous, locomotive plants with deadly stingers whose origins are unknown but appear to have been genetically engineered -- besieging the gates. But while the Triffids are more numerous than the surviving humans, they are not more clever, and they can be kept at bay with diligence. By today's standards for apocalyptic fiction, this story does seem quaint. Violence and death are present, but kept at arm's length. Still, I think The Day of the Triffids is far too unsettling to qualify as "cozy"; it's just more subtle that what we're used to.I remember how shocked I was when I read this for the first time many years ago, and realized that even before the Triffids lurched on the scene, everyone in the world goes blind as the result of watching a peculiar green meteor shower. This is the real catastrophe that destroys civilization and gives the Triffids the upper hand (so to speak). All of our advances and progress as a species are wiped out literally overnight by such a simple thing. This is not the only apocalyptic book to explore blindness as a catalyzing event, but it was the first one that I read. It wasn't that the idea was so terrifying, but that it was so isolating. Even the few remaining sighted are cut off because they can't reveal their ability to see for fear of being conscripted by the blind.Bill Masen is in the hospital, eyes bandaged from a recent Triffid attack (he works with them), when the calamity occurs. The first few chapters, when he realizes the extent of what has happened and then wanders through an eerily quiet London observing small but heartbreaking scenes of the newly blind, are bleak and disquieting. The overwhelming feeling of The Day of the Triffids is not terror or coziness, but resignation and a gloomy sense of loss. Also regret, as the characters come to realize that humankind must be responsible for what has happened to them.The Triffids are never a truly terrifying threat, as zombies might have been (although they resemble zombies in many ways). They just are able to multiply and relentlessly besiege the survivors. It doesn't seem cozy to imagine how tiring it must be, always keeping your guard up against millions of persistent plants. And the novel offers no satisfying resolution (unlike the movie), only a determination by the characters to take their world back. We don't know if they will succeed.
    • 4/5
      Simple science fiction at its best. Imagine London in the year of 1951 and a must see, once in a lifetime meteorite shower show takes place and causes everyone who witnesses the event becomes blind. During such happenings Triffids a once considered harmful garden plant begins to prey on humans, capable of discharging poison to kill and eat humans around the world. Can be used for descriptive, creative fiction writing, book reviews. A great book for young readers book club, book includes a reading group guide. Recommended for readers 12 years and older.
    • 4/5
      Something blinds all but a few. Walking plants, called triffids, begin to inherit the earth. Amazing how he portrays the moral dilemmas and human nature facets that would dominate the situation. As always, humanity disappoints in some regards and is logical in others. It's awesome.
    • 3/5
      Had a little John Wyndham binge and went straight into the triffids after reading "The Kraken Wakes". Less satirical and more dramatic/romantic this 1951 novel is still eminently readable. Strongest in its opening when the hero wakes in hospital after an accident to his eyes and only gradually comes to realise that something has gone horribly wrong with the world. I first came to this through its BBC radio dramatisation in the early 70s and still find it as chilling as ever!
    • 4/5
      Very good story, some writing I felt was a little bit long winded. Can't fault the overall plot but there seemed to me to be a few unnecessary parts which did not add much to the story. Definitely worth reading though. Would read more of Wyndhams work.
    • 4/5
      This was a pretty great apocalyptic classic sci fi novel. Amazing that I never read it before. It's a straightforward fast moving story, with a capable hero who happens to be a bit erudite which is a nice change in apocalyptic protagonists if you ask me. The world ends (for most) with an amazingly spectacular meteor shower that almost all of humanity watches. Sadly, the green flares of the spectacle burn out nearly everyone's optic nerve and blinds them soon after. Our hero, Bill Masen, is one of the lucky few who retains his sight, because he was thoroughly bandaged while healing from eye injuries and so missed the meteor display. Probably the world might have muddled along even with blindness, after much turmoil and fighting over resources and breakdown of civilized behavior, except for. . . the triffids! Not aliens bent on destroying humanity, no, actually they're just another human science project gone awry. They are carnivorous bioengineered plants spread all across the earth which can "walk" and stalk and kill humans and other animals with venomous whip-like stinger. Bill & his fellows must find a way to survive & recreate society if they can. The horror themes of this novel are rather timeless - you have your technologically caused catastrophe in the form of the meteor showers, which seem to have something to do with satellites, plus a bioengineered disaster - plants gone terribly wrong, and yet they seemed so useful, what with their valuable oil and some simple management practices! Unless you can't see them because you are blind. Oops.