Recently I finished reading my first 'Russian' novel(in English, of course). I have heard many people, especially writers, express an opinion that the Russian novel is the novel, and other works that go by that name are not even justified in wanting a comparison. A couple of years back I tried reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky, but it led nowhere. I painfully struggled through half the book before giving up. Anna, however, was quite a different story.
When I saw, for the first time, the 800-page hardbound volume, I wondered whether this book will make another Idiot out of me. But it was easy reading, and simply superb literature. I am no critic; I have nothing else to say except that i loved it. Tolstoy has coloured the gigantic canvas with every conceivable human emotion, thought and action. A real genius, that man.
Though it did surprise me that it was a tale about Anna Arkadyevna Karenina's love affair outside marriage. But love is love, whether inside marriage or not.
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