Thursday, December 17, 2015

Ten top books about justice and redemption

Jeffrey Lent's novel A Slant of Light is a Washington Post Notable Book of 2015. One of the author's top ten books about justice and redemption, as shared at the Guardian:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

There’s no escaping it: this is perhaps the greatest novel ever written. As such, it’s brimful of wordly justice and almost utterly lacking in redemption. Tolstoy, being Tolstoy, was not content to write a novel only about a “fallen” woman, but inserts us into the political life, the feudal system and the overarching military thrust of imperial Russia. The result is tactile, satisfying and immensely disturbing.
Read about another book on the list.

Anna Karenina also appears on Bethan Roberts's top ten list of novels about childbirth, Hannah Jane Parkinson's list of the ten worst couples in literature, Hanna McGrath's top fifteen list of epigraphs, Amelia Schonbek's list of three classic novels that pass the Bechdel test, Rachel Thompson's top ten list of the greatest deaths in fiction, Melissa Albert's recommended reading list for eight villains, Alison MacLeod's top ten list of stories about infidelity, David Denby's six favorite books list, Howard Jacobson's list of his five favorite literary heroines, Eleanor Birne's top ten list of books on motherhood, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, Chika Unigwe's six favorite books list, Elizabeth Kostova's list of favorite books, James Gray's list of best books, Marie Arana's list of the best books about love, Ha Jin's most important books list, Tom Perrotta's ten favorite books list, Claire Messud's list of her five most important books, Alexander McCall Smith's list of his five most important books, Mohsin Hamid's list of his ten favorite books, Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers, and among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey and Norman Mailer. John Mullan put it on his lists of ten of the best erotic dreams in literature, ten of the best coups de foudre in literature, ten of the best births in literature, ten of the best ice-skating episodes in literature, and ten of the best balls in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue