Orlando by Virginia Woolf audiobook review – a superb reading by Juliet Stevenson

Juliet Stevenson captures the singular rhythms of Woolf’s prose. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Spanning 350 years, Orlando is an adventure through time that tells of a seemingly immortal nobleman and would-be writer in the 16th century who catches the eye of Elizabeth I. After he arrives at court, he becomes her lover and she bestows on him land and property though is irked when she sees him kissing a younger woman. In the 17th century, during the reign of Charles II, he is made a duke and appointed ambassador to Constantinople; there, he sleeps for seven days and wakes up a woman. Sailing back to England, Orlando finds her sex means she can no longer own her home, leading to legal battles that drag on for many years. She takes to wearing masculine clothing in a bid to reclaim her authority and battle with the forces of patriarchy.

Nearly a century after it was written, Virginia Woolf’s pioneering, genre-bending novel – a feminist fantasy written as a biography – has come into its own in an age of increased understanding and visibility around gender nonconformity. The actor and audio veteran Juliet Stevenson is the voice of Orlando, her reading expertly navigating the book’s narrative detours and the scores of voices, capturing the singular rhythms of Woolf’s prose. As the decades pass, our hero-turned-heroine travels the world, has multiple affairs and refuses to be bound by the conventions of the ages in which she finds herself. By the 20th-century, she is able to make her name as a writer. Orlando stands as an exhilarating reminder that gender fluidity isn’t a modern invention and how, over time, a single person can live multiple lives.

• Available via Naxos Audiobooks, 9hr 16min

Further listening

Hardy Women

Paula Byrne, Williams Collins, 18hr 38min

Dawn Murphy narrates this study of women who knew, influenced or loved the Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy.

A House for Alice

Diana Evans, Penguin Audio, 11hr 54min

A companion piece to Ordinary People, Evans’s novel finds the titular Alice dreaming about building a home in Nigeria, the country she left 50 years ago. Narrated by Natalie Simpson.