Literature Network » Leo Tolstoy

Moved to tears Which book, poem or play has made you cry more than any other? Continuing our series, the writer Jan Morris chooses Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20031019
Author:Jan Morris

SENTIMENTALIST that I am, heaps of books have brought tears to my eyes - tears of sorrow, tears of pity, tears of laughter or tears of astonishment at the sheer miracle of great art.

One book has made me cry by playing upon all four of these emotions. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is so rich in character and incident that almost anyone can identify with it, propelled by a story-line that is intoxicatingly readable and blessed with

a heroine whose human strengths, frailties and destiny are so heart-rendingly recorded that they - well, they bring the tears to one's eyes.

I see that in 1962 I wrote ...

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