Customer Reviews

Anna Karenina in our time

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Having earlier concentrated on French literature, I had not read Anna Karenina until recently. I was amazed at its beauty and the subtlety of its portrayal of character. I bought Morson' book to gain a deeper appreciation of the novel and was not disappointed. Morson takes an approach which seeks neither to judge the work in its own time nor as if it were written in ours but seeks to create a dialogue between the work and issues relevant to our world. He shows that Tolstoy rejects the notion that great men and great events are decisive in history and emphasizes the importance of many, often insignificant, even unnoticed, events.

He tentatively rejects the most common reading of AK, that all would be well if Anna had been able to divorce, blaming her situation on bad law and social prejudice. In his analysis, Anna comes across as a considerably less sympathetic character, self-centered and failing to see, much less weigh, the consequences of her acts.Morson is an extremely fine analyst of all the principal characters of the novel. His heroine is Dolly, Anna' sister-in-law, whose devotion to family and her work and role in

life provide a model of the good life. Morson is unafraid to make moral judgments ( good and evil) about the acts and character of Tolstoy's personalities, an important and much needed step beyond mere analytical criticism.

Professor Morson is a brilliant scholar and this book is a must-read for anyone interested in learning more, not just about Russian literature, but about life.

Having just read Anna Karenina in a class situation, I was given this reference. If you read this analysis, you will understand how complex a novel Anna Karenina is and how Tolstoy's philosophy on relationships, families, and political beliefs still remain valuable in this age of sexual freedom and health care reform.I learned a lot about my own beliefs in this book.