Apuleius owes his world-wide fame to the „Metamorphoses“, the work that later by his compatriot Augustine was called „The Golden Ass“ and is the only Latin novel completely preserved. „The Golden Ass“ offers also to the modern reader a maximum of amusement, containing numberless „stories within the story“, whose quality is indicated by the fact that even Boccaccio used a lot of them for his „Decamerone“.
Apuleius renders in the first person the story of the young Lucius who by his curiosity runs headlong to his ruin; he is changed into an ass who nevertheless retains human consciousness, and in this form he experiences a plenty of very strange adventures and sufferings. Lucius falls among robbers, runs again and again into danger to life, happens to come across a sadistic shepherd boy and some deceitful perverse priests of the „Syrian goddess“, he is put into a treadmill, for a rich man he has to perform funny tricks in the manner of humans, for a Corinthian matron he must do an abnormal sexual service. And even the few people who mean well by him, because of Lucius’ curiosity get into the greatest danger, e.g. the faithful gardener who protects him from the Roman soldiers...       

CD 1:
Already in the first book of the „Golden Ass“, that is the text of the present audiobook, Apuleius offers to his reader a fireworks of thrilling, creepy and humorous stories.
At the beginning of the novel the young Lucius is riding from Corinthus to the Thessalian city of Hypata. During the travel Lucius meets Aristomenes from Aegina, a merchant selling honey and cheese, who tells him a really dreadful story about his poor friend Socrates who, rifled by robbers,  by a woman named Meroe first is received in a charitable way. She serves him a good meal, „finally, and by being pricked with carnal desire, she brought me to her own bed chamber“. Socrates falls in love with her. But already a short time after he remarks into whose devilish claws he has fallen: 

„...but I pray you give ear, and I will declare of more greater matters, which she has done openly and before the face of all men. In faith Aristomenes to tell you the truth, this woman had a certain Lover, whom by the utterance of one only word she turned into a Bever, because he loved another woman beside her: and the reason why she transformed him into such a beast is, for that it is his nature, when he perceived the hunters and hounds to draw after him, to bite off his members, and lay them in the way, that the hounds may be at a stop when they find them, and to the intent it might so happen unto him (for that he fancied another woman) she turned him into that kind of shape. Semblably she changed one of her neighbours, being an old man and one that sold wine, into a Frog, in that he was one of her occupation, and therefore she bare him a grudge, and now the poor miser swimming in one of his pipes of wine, and well night drowned in the dregs, does cry and call with an hoarse voice, for his old guests and acquaintance that pass by. Like wise she turned one of the Advocates of the Court (because he pleaded and spoke against her in a rightful cause) into a horned Ram, and now the poor Ram is become an Advocate. Moreover she caused, that the wife of a certain lover that she had should never be delivered of her child, but according to the computation of all men, it is eight years past since the poor woman first began to swell, and now she is encreased so big, that she seems as though she would bring forth some great Elephant:...“