# Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine - Hardcover

by **Bob Blaisdell** (Author)

**The story behind the origins of _Anna Karenina_ and the turbulent life and times of Leo Tolstoy.**

Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Remarkably, there has not yet been an examination of Leo Tolstoy specifically through the lens of this novel.

Critic and professor Bob Blaisdell unravels Tolstoy's family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised _Anna Karenina_. In the process, we see where Tolstoy's life and his art intersect in obvious and unobvious ways.

Readers often assume that Tolstoy, a nobleman-turned-mystic would write himself into the principled Levin. But in truth, it is within Anna that the consciousness and energy flows with the same depth and complexities as Tolstoy. Her fateful suicide is the road that Tolstoy nearly traveled himself.

At once a nuanced biography and portrait of the last decades of the Russian empire and artful literary examination, _Creating Anna Karenina_ will enthrall the thousands of readers whose lives have become deeper and clearer after experiencing this hallmark of world literature.

### Author Biography

**Bob Blaisdell** is Professor of English at the City University of New York's Kingsborough College and the author of _Creating Anna Karenina_. He is a reviewer for the _San Francisco Chronicle,_ the _Los Angeles Review of Books_, _The Christian Science Monitor_, and the editor of more than three dozen Dover literature and poetry collections, including a collection of Chekhov's love stores. He lives in New York City.

**Number of Pages:** 400

**Dimensions:** 1.7 x 9.1 x 5.9 IN

**Publication Date:** August 04, 2020

## Details

- **Price:** 29.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 29.95 USD | In stock |

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- Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine - Hardcover

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