Carmen

A French scholar traveling through Andalusia crosses paths twice with trouble: first a notorious bandit, then a bewitching Romani woman in Cordoba who steals his watch while telling his fortune. Later the bandit, Don José, once a promising soldier, tells the scholar his story, and how a single encounter with Carmen unraveled his career, his conscience, and his life, one fatal choice at a time.

Mérimée's lean 1845 novella is the source of Bizet's opera, and it's harder-edged than the music: a cool, almost documentary frame wrapped around a story of obsession that burns straight to its end. Carmen herself is free and fearless and loyal only to her own liberty, one of fiction's great forces of nature. At around three hours, it's a single-evening listen with a long echo.

At roughly 25,700 words, Carmen runs about 3 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
2. Search for “Carmen” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

Speech is generated locally without uploading the book for narration. Download the book and check your chosen voice before travelling offline. Available voices depend on your device; check the in-app voice list. Try every available voice for your first 8 hours of listening. Afterwards, keep a free English voice selection and unlimited book listening. No LoudReader account or word quota.