In a packed Mayflower Bookshop, the audience listened spellbound as Slavic literature expert, communications consultant and journalist Louis Smit told us about the Russian literary tradition in the 19th century, the great Russian author Lev Tolstoy and his masterpiece Anna Karenina.
In this fifth Great Loves lecture, Smit gave us an insight into the tragic love story between Anna Karenina, trapped in a loveless marriage, and her lover, Alexei Vronski, and the place of this masterpiece in the Russian literary tradition.
Smit emphasized that, while Anna Karenina is a unique masterpiece, it does not stand alone in its subject matter, but has its place in a European tradition, on a par with great 19th century novels such as George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
The afternoon ended with a dramatic reading of a few fragments from the novel, performed by the Mayflower Theatre Company.
A (renewed) acquaintance with a novel that is still well worth your attention!!
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