The Monk: A Romance

Ambrosio is the most celebrated monk in Madrid, a preacher so revered that crowds fight for seats at his sermons, and pride is only the first of his sins. Lewis charts the abbot's temptation and spectacular fall with a relish that scandalized 1796: forbidden desire, sorcery, poison, the dungeons of the Inquisition, and a legendary spectre called the Bleeding Nun haunting a parallel tale of two young lovers trying to escape a convent's grip.

Written when its author was just nineteen, The Monk is the Gothic novel with the brakes cut, lurid, headlong, and still genuinely shocking where its politer rivals merely shiver. If you want to understand where horror fiction's appetite for transgression began, it begins here.

At roughly 138,100 words, The Monk: A Romance runs about 15½ 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 “The Monk: A Romance” 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.