Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Audiobook2 hours
Underground Man
Written by Gabriel Tarde
Narrated by LibriVox Community
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this audiobook
This post-apocalyptic novella tells the story of the downfall of civilisation and mankind following a solar cataclysm in the late 20th century. To survive, the remnants of humanity had to build a new civilization underground in the complete absence of all species except mankind, choosing to base it only on love and beauty, the fine arts and intellectual pursuits.
In view of the sun's current inactivity, this frighteningly prophetic tale might have been written today, saving that the cultural references and the fluid prose might be beyond, if one dares say so, many modern writers.
Tarde was a French sociologist, criminologist and social psychologist. This novella was, as far as I know, his only venture into the writing of fiction, and is heavy with philosophical, sociological, scientific and even political concepts. It is an absorbing and thought-provoking work. (Summary by Ruth Golding)
Related to Underground Man
Related audiobooks
The Art of the Novel Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches, 1937-1958 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Imaginary Museum: A Personal Tour of Contemporary Art featuring ghosts, nudity and disagreements Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParisians: An Adventure History of Paris Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunchback of Notre Dame Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pursuit of Equality in the West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKant's Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Night Land Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Soul of Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTragedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dog of Tithwal: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Judderman: The Eden Book Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Fantasy For You
A Court of Mist and Fury Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fourth Wing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Thorns and Roses Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Court of Frost and Starlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Omens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iron Flame Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Wings and Ruin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hobbit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Blood and Ash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stardust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Silver Flames Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Omens: A Full Cast Production Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stardust: The Gift Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Gods [TV Tie-In]: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Psyche and Eros: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Two Towers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neverwhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Practical Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outlander Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related podcast episodes
Farah Nayeri, author of "Takedown" 0% found this document usefulPeter Salmon, "An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida" (Verso, 2020): An interview with Peter Salmon 0% found this document usefulPeter Salmon, "An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida" (Verso, 2020): An interview with Peter Salmon 0% found this document usefulDaniel Sherman, "French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945-1975" (U Chicago Press, 2011) 0% found this document useful118. Frances Barber in Georgian London 0% found this document usefulAlbert Camus vs. Jean-Paul Sartre 0% found this document usefulModern Culture: Melvyn Bragg examines the definition and state of modern culture in the 20th century. 0% found this document usefulModern Culture: Melvyn Bragg examines the definition and state of modern culture in the 20th century. 0% found this document usefulBataille: Nietzsche or Communism? An Interview with Stuart Kendall 100% found this document usefulAndrea Wulf on The Invention of Nature, Part 1: Humboldt's Naturegemälde 0% found this document usefulVoltaire's Candide: Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, published in 1759. 0% found this document usefulVoltaire's Candide: Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, published in 1759. 0% found this document useful
Related articles
Michael Wood On... BBC History MagazineArticle
Michael Wood On...
Feb 18, 2021
It’s time for a book clear out. I’ve been avoiding this moment for some years, but (and I’m sure many readers feel the same) our house is sagging under a lifetime’s accumulation of history books, especially from second-hand bookshops. Arlington and L
3 min readBalzac And The Reassembly Of France The Paris ReviewArticle
Balzac And The Reassembly Of France
Apr 10, 2019
6 min readCarlos Fonseca on Harnessing the Literary Power of Tedium Literary HubArticle
Carlos Fonseca on Harnessing the Literary Power of Tedium
Aug 28, 2020
6 min readSlouching Towards Dystopia The CaravanArticle
Slouching Towards Dystopia
Jun 9, 2019
16 min readTop 10 Postmodern Books The GuardianArticle
Top 10 Postmodern Books
Nov 3, 2021
In 1996 Andrew C Bulhak of Monash University created a computer program called the Postmodernism Generator, which automatically produces imitations of postmodernist writing. “It is a literally infinite source of randomly generated, syntactically corr
5 min readTheir Lives Go On Until They Don’t: The Trouble with Refugee Novels The MillionsArticle
Their Lives Go On Until They Don’t: The Trouble with Refugee Novels
Jan 28, 2019
If art is in one sense the processing of reality, how can an artist hope to process that which, in all its horror and incoherence, resists interpretation? The post Their Lives Go On Until They Don’t: The Trouble with Refugee Novels appeared first on
8 min readIt’s In Milan Kundera’s Ambiguities And Contradictions That We Find His Truths | Kenan Malik The GuardianArticle
It’s In Milan Kundera’s Ambiguities And Contradictions That We Find His Truths | Kenan Malik
Jul 16, 2023
The novelist, Milan Kundera once observed to fellow-writer Philip Roth, “teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question”. He feared that in a world in which people “prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than ask… the v
4 min readThe Reckoning Is Yet to Come The AtlanticArticle
The Reckoning Is Yet to Come
Apr 11, 2022
7 min readThe Best Book I Read This Year The AtlanticArticle
The Best Book I Read This Year
Dec 9, 2015
36 min readRevising the History of the Art Show Urinal The MillionsArticle
Revising the History of the Art Show Urinal
Aug 17, 2017
It wasn’t even the piece that was groundbreaking—it was the narrative pushed to popularize it. Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was the truer Dadaist, but Duchamp the better marketer. The post Revising the History of the Art Show Urinal appeared
5 min readLosing Higher Ground The CaravanArticle
Losing Higher Ground
Jul 9, 2021
19 min readThe Fundamental Truths Of Fiction The Critic MagazineArticle
The Fundamental Truths Of Fiction
Apr 29, 2021
7 min readWrite What You Know? Identity Politics and Fiction The MillionsArticle
Write What You Know? Identity Politics and Fiction
Oct 11, 2017
If it weren’t so illustrative of the loaded identitarian schism at the heart of leftist politics, it would make for the perfect right-wing conspiracy: not only have well-meaning liberals become too PC, they are now roundly dismissed as blinkered by t
14 min readCrossing Borders| Books India TodayArticle
Crossing Borders| Books
Sep 20, 2019
In 1936, in a previous era of anti-globalisation and anti-immigration rhetoric, an Indian migrant and an eminent social scientist, Radhakamal Mukerjee, published what is arguably the world's first immigration manifesto. In a book titled Migrant Asia,
2 min readOn Translating the Little Known Italian Novel That Anticipated the Anthropocene Literary HubArticle
On Translating the Little Known Italian Novel That Anticipated the Anthropocene
Dec 7, 2020
11 min readHistory The OldieArticle
History
Sep 20, 2023
JOYA CHATTERJI Bodley Head, 849pp, £30 Married to Anil Seal, Chatterji is ‘one half of the power couple that has led the study of South Asian history at Cambridge for fifty years,’ wrote Oxford historian Zareer Masani in the Literary Review, and is t
10 min read2023 Books Of The Year BBC History MagazineArticle
2023 Books Of The Year
Nov 23, 2023
12 min readThe Capital of Self-Reliance The American ScholarArticle
The Capital of Self-Reliance
Sep 1, 2021
4 min readPhilosophies of Distance and Proximity: Who Are We When We’re Alone? Literary HubArticle
Philosophies of Distance and Proximity: Who Are We When We’re Alone?
Jul 9, 2020
8 min readHow Paris Turned Me Into a Writer Literary HubArticle
How Paris Turned Me Into a Writer
Oct 12, 2017
4 min readLetters The Critic MagazineArticle
Letters
Feb 24, 2022
I’m a fan of Jonathan Meades, but his piece on Welsh and Wales was a nasty mix of cliché, minority-bashing, cultural snobbery and factual inaccuracy. He knows neither the country nor anything of the past and present life of the Welsh language. He doe
3 min readBehind The Fake News Country LifeArticle
Behind The Fake News
Dec 27, 2019
7 min readMephistopheles In The Anthropocene The MillionsArticle
Mephistopheles In The Anthropocene
May 6, 2022
"Him will I drag through life's wild waste, /Through scenes of vapid dullness," Mephistopheles says, and it might describe the experience of endlessly perusing Twitter, anesthetizing yourself as you doom scroll. The post Mephistopheles in the Anthrop
10 min readStaff Picks: Documentaries, Snapshots, and Glossy Color Images The Paris ReviewArticle
Staff Picks: Documentaries, Snapshots, and Glossy Color Images
Aug 24, 2018
4 min readGabriel García Márquez Remembers His Dearest Friend, Julio Cortázar Literary HubArticle
Gabriel García Márquez Remembers His Dearest Friend, Julio Cortázar
Jan 8, 2019
4 min readAlso On The Bookshelf BBC History MagazineArticle
Also On The Bookshelf
Jul 8, 2021
The Master of Measham Hall by Anna Abney (Duckworth, 304 pages, £14.99) Opening in a plague-ridden London still bearing the scars of civil war, this novel follows Alethea Hawthorne’s quest to return to her ancestral home in Derbyshire – a long and da
2 min readA Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš The MillionsArticle
A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš
Dec 10, 2017
One winter I came down with pneumonia twice in five months. The doctors, with my semi-conscious consent, were ready to try anything. One thing they did try was a technique “to warm up the lungs.” It involved a canvas corset that looked like it had be
8 min readReading in the Dark Foreign Policy MagazineArticle
Reading in the Dark
Feb 1, 2017
In the age of Trump, literature can sustain those searching for the courage to resist the politics of division.
4 min readGotham, Metropolis, Shanghai, Warsaw: On the Anxieties of Cities Literary HubArticle
Gotham, Metropolis, Shanghai, Warsaw: On the Anxieties of Cities
Nov 12, 2020
6 min read'Seventh Function' Is A Postmodern Mashup Of Fact, Fiction And Philosophy NPRArticle
'Seventh Function' Is A Postmodern Mashup Of Fact, Fiction And Philosophy
Aug 1, 2017
3 min read
Reviews for Underground Man
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews