My Revolutions, by Hari Kunzru, read by Simon Prebble. Unabridged, 9½ hours. HighBridge Audio, $34.95.

Michael Frame is a suburban house-husband, a mild-mannered, apolitical Englishman who putters around doing nothing much while his increasingly distant wife starts a business during the go-go late ’90s.

Chris Carver, though — he was something else. A ’60s London radical, part of an underground movement that meant to overthrow the capitalist system and so end the war in Vietnam, Chris was passionate. And his passion extended to the lovely Anna Addison, who would famously die during the occupation of an embassy building in Copenhagen.

The thing is, Michael really is Chris. He’s changed his name, ditched his politics, found refuge in the bottle. But now, on the eve of his 50th birthday, his past is about to catch up with him. And Anna, who may not really be dead, is at the heart of the situation.

Kunzru’s novel takes Michael back and forth in time, reliving his radical days and trying to make sense of his present. Kunzru gives Michael too many edges to be likable, but we can see how he got where he is, how all his fine intentions led him to a hole from which he may not be able to emerge — and we can sympathize with his predicament.

Prebble, a Publishers Weekly “Narrator of the Year,” uses a variety of accents to make distinct characters of Chris and the other male revolutionaries. He’s less successful with the women, using the same timbres for them as for the men, but they are a minor enough presence that it’s not too much of a distraction.

Selections from Dreamsongs, Volume III: Selections from Wild Cards and More Stories from Martin’s Later Years, by George R.R. Martin, read by Claudia Black, Erik Davies, Roy Dotrice, Kirby Heyborne and Adrian Paul, with extensive commentary read by Martin. Unabridged selections, 20 hours. Random House Audio, $34.95.

I don’t normally listen to all the parts of a series. There are so many books published each year that I want to spread my time around and give readers a peek into more authors’ worlds.

But I’ve happily suspended my usual rule to listen to all three parts of Martin’s Dreamsongs, which taken together dramatically show his growth over his writing career. In fact, in one of the most interesting stories here from the standpoint of the writer’s craft, Martin revisits one of his earliest pieces.

The reworked story centers on the real-life surrender of Sveaborg, a Swedish sea fortress built on six islands in what is now Finland, to the Russians in 1808. As a 1960s college student, Martin wrote a somewhat befuddling tale — reproduced in Volume I of Dreamsongs — of apparent betrayal and a Swedish officer’s attempt to fight the yielding of the fortress. In the far more sophisticated 1985 version read for us here, the same historical events are evoked and the same characters take part, but this time the officer’s motivation is clear: he is being affected by an effort from the future to change history, thus staving off a disastrous war between the West and the Soviet Union.

Volume III also includes such gems as Martin’s World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Skin Trade, featuring some very human werewolves, and, best of all, the first prequel in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire universe, the novella-length The Hedge Knight. The story brings us a just-minted, very likable young knight who has earned the wrath of members of the royal house and must figure out a way to survive a medieval-style tournament in which a princeling wants him dead.

As in the other volumes of Dreamsongs, the readers here are high-quality, and Martin is an able teller of his own insightful commentary.

Alan Rosenberg is The Journal’s South County regional editor.