In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written.
In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization,…
"A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles. . . . It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
While Virginia Woolf--one of our century's most brilliant and mercurial writers--has had no shortage of biographers, none has seemed as naturally suited to the task as Hermione Lee. Subscribing to Virginia Woolf's own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of the writer and the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact. Such issues as sexual abuse, mental illness, and…
An incandescent novel, slowly revealing its secrets and connections in lyrical prose and a looping narrative. Urquhart takes us into a child’s confused imagination, an adult’s poignant nostalgia, and a landscape of menacing beauty. Glimpses of strange phenomena and portraits of familiar figures are subtly melded into a glorious, satisfying whole.
