author
Karl May
1842–1912
A master of grand adventure stories, this hugely popular German writer sent generations of readers into the American West, the Middle East, and beyond. His tales of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand became some of the best-known adventure fiction in the German-speaking world.
7 Audiobooks
Winnetou I
by Karl May
Durch Wüste und Harem
by Karl May
Winnetou, the Apache Knight
by Marion Ames Taggart, Karl May
Mein Leben und Streben
by Karl May
De schat in het Zilvermeer
by Karl May
Door het land der Skipetaren
by Karl May
About the author
Born in Saxony in 1842, he became one of Germany’s most widely read authors and wrote dozens of novels and travel adventures. Although many readers treated his faraway settings as firsthand experience, his fame rested above all on his gift for vivid storytelling and larger-than-life heroes.
His best-known books follow figures such as Winnetou, the Apache chief, and Old Shatterhand, May’s German frontier hero. He also set major works in the Ottoman world and other distant landscapes, mixing action, friendship, danger, and moral ideals in a way that made his fiction especially memorable.
He died in 1912, but his work remained enormously influential through reprints, translations, films, and museums devoted to his life and legacy. For many listeners and readers, his stories still offer the thrill of old-style adventure with a strong sense of myth and wonder.