Hello and welcome back to Hardcore Literature. It's been a little while since our last show,

putting the Jung show aside that's just come out, because the Hardcore Literature Book Club

has taken off. So I've been spending most of my time over there the last couple of months.

Today, we're talking about Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, but there's two caveats.

The first caveat is a spoiler warning. I'm going to

hold off on talking about the end of Tolstoy's great novel until the end of this show. So I'm going to

give you a heads up and you can end this episode at that point if you'd rather not have the

story spoiled for you. You could, if you

haven't already, go and read the novel and then return to the show. Caviate number two is that

this episode really is only scratching the surface of what is easily my favorite novel of all

time. Okay, it's vying for Top Spot with Hugo's Les Miserables.

It's vying for Prousts, Allarachate de Tompardou, in search of lost time.

There's a lot of great books.

But Anna Karenina, at the moment, top spot for me.

It's my favourite novel of all time.

And when I look back in the future, when I look back upon 2020, the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, one of the most significant things to me is not going to be the lockdowns or the pandemic or anything like that.

Funnily enough, that's been an all-pervasive thing that's kind of consumed

everybody globally. It's definitely consumed us over here in England. It's not really going to be

that. It's going to be, my memory of the end of last year and the beginning of this year,

will be teaching Anna Karenina, living the book. I have reread I was Tolstoy Zana Kerenina endlessly. I have read almost

every translation, not every single one, but almost every translation, every translation worth

dipping into. I have read it so many times that my copy, and actually I have like 10 different

...