The Second Lady

 'The second lady', written by famous American author Irving Wallace, is a fascinating USA-Russia cold war thriller.

When I read this book for the first time, I was in 9th or 10th standard and ofcourse I read the translated version back then.

The plot of the story was so intriguing that I had to look for original book when started reading English novels.

The story goes like this - To grab an inside information over a politically critical matter, KGB (Soviets intelligence agency) plots an unbelievable plan to replace the American First Lady with a look alike, a Russian actress with  strong resemblance who has been tweaked and trained to perfection over the period of three years.

The replacement happens as planned but un-foreseen hurdles keep cropping up in the secret mission.

We have to keep in mind that this book was released in 1980. The secret services of the time had been small force then. The internet, mobile phones were atleast fifteen years away from becoming mainstream reality. So the story has to be lived in the period it has been told.

This book has everything that a perfect novel demands - gripping plot, love, drama, action, entertainment.

Irving's writing style is not very tricky but the overall storyline and continuous twists keep readers hooked till the end. 

The nail biting and unusual climax left me absolutely stunned.

Certainly an entertaining and unput-down-able page turner read, wonder why it didn't get converted into movie or TV series.

#2023readinggoals

Anna Karenina

My first long read of 2021 is 'Anna Karenina', an timeless classic by Russian author 'Leo Tolstoy', published in 1878.

A complex novel, acclaimed by many writers as one of the world's greatest novels, 'Anna Karenina' deals with troubled affair of a married woman. But that is not the only theme in this novel. It also describes a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia in 19th century along with politics, religion and humanity.

In my true opinion, the title of this novel is little misleading because the story solely doesn't revolve around Anna. The parts of the book that focuses on Anna's story do portray her character, passionate affair with Vronsky, agony of a mother and later her downward fall.

The other half of novel is devoted to 'Levin', a country landowner, who is in constant search for meaning of life.

Both these leading characters ie Anna and Levin, do not even meet each other till 80% of story is told.

But only towards the end I realized the contrast of characteristics these 2 display towards finding peace of heart.

Considering the length of the novel (approx 1000 pages), it is bound to have many characters. Tolstoy has made each of them fully human, everyone with their own vivid characteristics and flaws.

While reading this long saga, somewhere half way through I realized that I have stopped judging the morality of characters and merely accepting them as they are.

The original novel was ofcourse written in Russian. The English translation in illustrated version that I read is peculiarly worded. eg women are not 'pregnant' but they are 'with child', people are 'deceived' and 'received', things are 'Capital' and so on

Also there are peculiar things about Russian society like 2 words names, mentions of common domestic helps like nurse/footman/doorman, peasants and their lives etc 

The novel has been adapted into various audio-visual platforms including opera, film, television, ballet, and radio drama. 

The prominent and latest one is the movie with same title as of book, released in 2012 featuring Keira Knightley, Aaron Johnson etc