2011/17

Leo Tolstoi: Anna Karenina (512p.)

I had been wanting to read Anna Karenina for a long time. But as you all know I’m a stickler for getting my hands on nice copies, and so I had stubbornly refused to touch the crumpled Rainbow paperback edition the lady once knicked from a South-African backpackers, and had instead scoured every bookstore I have been in the last few years for a better version.

Not so long ago I unexpectedly ran into this beautiful old Dutch hardcover copy while waiting for the windshield of my car to be replaced, in a half café half bookstore downtown Gent, with a friendly warden, who offered it to me for a sheer 2 euro, for the sheer pleasure of selling it to an aficionado.

The canon, my friends – Dostoevsky called it ‘the perfect novel.’