Episode details

Radio 3,26 Dec 2019,14 mins

Series Open Endings

Elif Shafak on Anna Karenina

The Essay

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Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends. Award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak first glimpsed Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on a bookshelf at school. It was only years later that she managed to get her hands on a copy. The experience stirred her soul. The romance was raw, wrong and real. But the book's ending came as a surprise. For this Boxing Day edition, Elif imagines what would happen if Anna were able to meet her creator, Tolstoy himself, after the novel's final page. Producer: Camellia Sinclair

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