but I think it's a near-perfect, if longish work. War and Peace is a far more ambitious, large-scale piece, with the main character of Pierre almost a doppleganger of Tolstoi's. It has to be huge, in fact, to encompass the sweep of humanity and the effects that war and peace have upon the social and economic factors of the human condition.

Anna is a more intime work...another jewel. Upon my last reading of it, I was struck how this novel could never be written today; indeed I wonder if we can truly fathom what Anna is going through, given the radically different climate of morality.

To my way of thinking, that it succeeds as brilliantly today as it does can only be attributed to Tolstoi's genius. The man could both create and craft a story.