Which Nineteen Eighty-Four recording should you buy?
Seven editions, and the shortest is marked Unabridged. The complete novel runs a little over twelve hours; there is a listing here at 1 hour 53 carrying the same label as the twelve-hour ones.
Short answer
Peter Capaldi, unabridged, 12 hours 22 minutes -- complete, solo, and the Penguin Modern Classics edition. Two things on this page are not the novel and only one of them says so. Philip Glenister at 5h51 is honestly marked abridged, and it is less than half the book. The Tim Pigott-Smith listing is marked Unabridged and runs 1 hour 53, which is about a sixth of every other complete reading; the label and the runtime cannot both be right and we would believe the runtime. The Audible Original with Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy is a dramatisation -- excellent, star-studded, and 3h27 rather than 12h22.
Every recording, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Capaldi Our pick | 12 hrs 22 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. Penguin Modern Classics. |
| Andrew Wincott | 12 hrs 19 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Carl Mason | 11 hrs 29 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Mark Young | 9 hrs 48 mins | Unabridged | Marked unabridged and around two and a half hours shorter than the cluster. Brisk, but not out of the range that pace alone can explain. |
| Philip Glenister | 5 hrs 51 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to under half the novel. Honestly labelled, which is more than the entry below manages. |
| Tim Pigott-Smith | 1 hr 53 mins | Unabridged | Marked Unabridged at 1h53, against complete readings of over twelve hours. That is roughly a sixth of the book. The label and the runtime disagree. |
| Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, Tom Hardy and others | 3 hrs 27 mins | Full-cast dramatisation | An Audible Original adaptation. A cast, not a narrator, and about a quarter of the running time of the novel. |