Presented annually by the Audio Publishers Association, an American organization representing audio publishing companies and allied suppliers, distributors and retailers of spoken word products, the Audies honour the best in audio books. Last year’s winners included Nelson Mandela’s Favourite African Folktales, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren, Don Cheadle and Alan Rickman, and Booker-prize winner Wolf Hall, narrated by Simon Slater.
Over 1,100 audio books were entered in this year’s competition. Winners will be announced at the Audies Gala on May 24, 2011, at the Times Center in New York City. (We've got our fingers, toes, arms, legs and hearts crossed.)
Vikings is not only a chronicle of the early twentieth-century industrial seal hunt, but of the speech, folklore and beliefs of rural Newfoundlanders of that period. These long gone and never to return voices of the men who plied the spring seal fishery are rendered vividly by Frank Holden, veteran playwright, actor and narrator. Like Chaucer's pilgrims on the way to Canterbury, the "swilers" offer us their stories about a hard-scrabble life valiantly faced, on both land and sea.
Vikings of the Ice is available from Rattling Books as an MP3 audio book CD and an MP3 download.
