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Harry potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
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About the author
J.K. Rowling
699 books234k followersSee also: Robert Galbraith
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 10, 2026
Would give it 100 stars
March 5, 2026
Loved it! Harry, Ron and Hermione have the best voices! Only two character voices I’m not sold on are Snape and madam Pomfrey.
February 16, 2026
Another wonderful full‑cast performance in the Harry Potter series—this time "The Prisoner of Azkaban". The production is so immersive that more than once I found myself turning toward my phone as if I could see the action unfolding, briefly forgetting that this was an audiobook and not a film playing in the background.
The voice acting is excellent overall, with some standout performances. Iwan Rheon brings a beautifully nuanced portrayal to Lupin, and Arabella Stanton is simply the embodiment Hermione. I’m still not sold on Riz Ahmed’s interpretation of Severus Snape, though. In removing the quiet vulnerability that Alan Rickman brought to the role, this version leans more toward the tone of Argus Filch: harsh, petty, and more of a bully than a complex antagonist. It leaves you genuinely disliking the character. And then there’s the voice chosen for Poppy Pomfrey, so loud and grating that I often wanted to skip her scenes entirely.
Even longtime Harry Potter fans who know the books by heart will find new nuances in this unabridged full‑cast edition. It’s refreshing to revisit the original text and be reminded of just how much richness never made it into the films. I can’t wait for the next installment in the series.
The voice acting is excellent overall, with some standout performances. Iwan Rheon brings a beautifully nuanced portrayal to Lupin, and Arabella Stanton is simply the embodiment Hermione. I’m still not sold on Riz Ahmed’s interpretation of Severus Snape, though. In removing the quiet vulnerability that Alan Rickman brought to the role, this version leans more toward the tone of Argus Filch: harsh, petty, and more of a bully than a complex antagonist. It leaves you genuinely disliking the character. And then there’s the voice chosen for Poppy Pomfrey, so loud and grating that I often wanted to skip her scenes entirely.
Even longtime Harry Potter fans who know the books by heart will find new nuances in this unabridged full‑cast edition. It’s refreshing to revisit the original text and be reminded of just how much richness never made it into the films. I can’t wait for the next installment in the series.
February 22, 2026
I found the 3rd full cast audio a little more distracting than the others and overwhelming in a few parts. I did feel as if the dementors were breathing on me in a few parts. I didn’t find myself as wrapped up in this story as others so far but still good. I did love seeing more history on some of the teachers & Harry’s family.
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February 3, 2026Very much enjoying this series of full-cast audios! Brings the story to life in a whole new way! Forgot how good Azkaban is; definitely worth the reread!
February 24, 2026
Best one yet! Time for book 4!
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February 22, 2026Book three still might be my favorite of the series.
February 11, 2026
I love how immersive this series of audiobooks are. I love the way Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù voiced Sirius Black he seemed really loving and caring at the end of the book. Despite at first me comparing him to Gary Oldman who played him in films. The full cast and sound effects of the train and of the dementors make seems as though you are really there. Much better in my opinion than the films as I can imagine myself actually being in the story. By the way, I signed up to audible just so I can watch this series. It was much cheaper I got the first 3 months for 99p. So instead paying £30+ for it on amazon I can get it permanently on audible for only 99p even after the series is fully out and I cancel audible.
January 28, 2026
Another wonderful addition to the full cast series. The only real drawback I see is how quickly they're releasing them meaning that the actors voicing the Golden Trio for example still sound like small children three volumes in when they're meant to be 13 years old. Hoping some of the later volumes hire older actors. But it's very well done and enjoyable!
January 22, 2026
The Quidditch final and the climax of this book were shining stars in the all-cast production, and it was still excellent overall. But I did feel like some of the voice actors were a little flat and lacking emotion this time around.
January 25, 2026
5 stars for the book. 4 stars for the full cast. This was actually not as hard to listen to as the first two books. I will say there was a lot of heavy breathing that could have been eliminated. I believe since this book had more action scenes in it that it made the full cast reading entertaining.
February 16, 2026
The Audible audiobook is excellent as expected, but I forgot how much details went into the book. Alfonso Cuarón’s smart cuts, tighter pacing, and darker style is a great case where the adaptation more efficient and effective than the source material.
January 25, 2026
this hittttttts
February 1, 2026
Amazing new voices !!
February 5, 2026
I’m really loving this full cast audio experience 💕
February 14, 2026
Audiobook
February 16, 2026
Mikið er skemmtilegt að rifja þessar bækur upp. Þessi útsetning er frábær!
March 1, 2026
Wow. Once again the cast did an amazing job of bringing this story to life. I can’t wait to continue on with this series hearing them in a new way!
March 3, 2026
What used to be my least favorite in the series, stands on its own and arguably has the best writing of any in the series.
March 6, 2026
Have to listen with headphones otherwise can't hear all background noises clearly. But when your sick with flu prob not a good idea to have 🎧 on for too long!
March 11, 2026
I've always felt like this is the book that really gets the series moving and the voice acting did the same thing. The actors finally got their groove and the acting really flows.
February 4, 2026
Another fine full-cast recording from Hogwarts.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews