Anna Karenina and How to Read Long Books
"One chapter at a time" is actually how books like Tolstoy's were intended to be read.Anna Karenina is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, alongside War and Peace, penned by the same author, Leo Tolstoy. The novel, which Tolstoy regarded as his “first,” is the story of an alluring young woman who commits adultery with a military man, and the shroud of relationships surrounding her life and fate. Reading Anna Karenina is like going back in time to 19th-century Russia and yet remaining rooted in the experiences, conflicts, and temptations that define all eras and contexts. As my former teacher said, it is “a rapturous sonata of a novel. One foot in time and place, one in the eternal. The human heart in conflict with itself, like Faulkner said.” (When asked Read More ›