The Crocodile by Fyodor Dostoyevsky audiobook.

Genre: comedy

In a glittering St Petersburg arcade, a minor civil servant named Ivan Matveich takes his ambitious young wife Elena and their friend to admire the modern wonders of commerce and foreign goods. The outing turns instantly grotesque when Ivan, showing off with smug curiosity, provokes a placid exhibition crocodile and is swallowed whole - not killed, but trapped alive inside the animal as it continues to sit on display. What follows is a razor-edged farce about reputation, bureaucracy, and the strange ways people turn calamity into opportunity. As officials debate responsibility, proprietors calculate profit, and acquaintances swarm with advice, Ivan discovers that being publicly inconvenienced can be oddly empowering, especially in a society obsessed with status and paperwork. Dostoyevsky uses the absurd predicament to skewer self-importance and the hollow language of progress, while also probing how quickly compassion gives way to spectacle. Compact, sharp, and unsettlingly funny, The Crocodile is a satirical portrait of a world where a man can become a talking exhibit and still worry most about his career.

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Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:24:13) Chapter 02

(00:44:23) Chapter 03

(01:17:33) Chapter 04

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