The best audiobook performances of 2020





OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES

These narrators and performers deliver
true feats of audio greatness.

By Malcolm X, Alex Haley
Performed by Laurence Fishburne


It's a tricky exercise to nail down the best performances amid a Best of the Year collection that is—by definition—awash in great performances. So we tried to home in on listens where the voice is the star, the thing that makes this list unmissable. We felt this in the chemistry that twinkles between Ryan Sampson and Sian Polhill Thomas in Miscellaneous 0125, and Grace Gummer's raw portrayal of a young woman in crisis in My Dark Vanessa was a perpetual punch to the gut. The powerful cast behind In Love and Struggle made that struggle capital-R Real, and what can we say but Alanis Morissette transported us Gen-X women to a previous time. But it was Laurence Fishburne's rendition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X that resonated the most for us, this year of all years. His performance brings a new reverence and urgency to the ever-relevant 1965 classic.

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