Altmann's Tongue cover art

Altmann's Tongue

Stories and a Novella

Preview
Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Altmann's Tongue

Written by: Brian Evenson
Narrated by: Neil Shah
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹668.00

Buy Now for ₹668.00

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Evenson's first collection of 25 short stories and one novella, Altmann's Tongue (1994), garnered comparisons to Paul Bowles, Poe, and Kafka and is considered by many an existential masterpiece.

Chilling and severe, these stories reveal humans struggling with the brutality of the world and with one another, and trying to talk their way out of their own helplessness and fear.

In Evenson's world, moral and social categories dissolve and mutate, and our own understanding of our relationship to reality itself seems increasingly vexed and contingent. A father buries his daughter without telling his wife that she has died. A man commits two murders, one justified, the other not, and then undergoes a startling transformation. A detective wanders through a case, becoming further and further estranged from even the possibility of truth.

"Showing off Evenson's myriad skills, the stories range from rural tales of death to a retelling of the biblical Job story, in which a skeletonized Job trades barbs and blows with a murderous lumberjack.... There is a detached brutality to the collection, similar to Beckett's novels, which, due to Evenson's precise control over language, is both disturbing and compelling." (Review of Contemporary Fiction)

©1994 Brian Evenson (P)2022 Audible, Inc.
Anthologies & Short Stories Short Stories

What listeners say about Altmann's Tongue

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.