I began with Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and finally, almost in the same order as I had first gone through the Russians, ended up with Anna Karenina. I was planning to set my next novel in 1930s Leningrad, and so I needed to re-acquaint myself with the Russian canon. For me, if not the greatest book, then at least the greatest love affair ever written.Īnd then, as an adult, I was lucky enough to find my way back to Anna. Love, true love, so pure, so unworldly, that it could only end in death. That's what I thought the book was about.
What stuck with me about the novel was that fated love affair where that most beautiful of women, Anna Karenina, is driven by passion into the arms of that most engaging of heroes, Vronsky. But I did know this was the best book I had ever read, and Anna Karenina the most magnificent of heroines. Even then, I wasn't interested in list making.
The greatest novel ever written - that's the kind of thing people used to say about Anna Karenina. Here I paused, because here I fell in love.
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