Anna Karenina [comic version] (Katya Metelitsa)
April 07, 2003

I work with various Russians and Russian scholars, and as soon as they heard that I was reading Anna Karenina, one loaned me the modernized, abridged, bilingual, graphic version (script by Katya Metelitsa). I'm a sucker for adapted/altered/modernized classics, and usually like them in spite of their myriad flaws. This one, despite the charming bilingual speech bubbles, may be an exception. It's mildly entertaining; it's also rushed, jumbled, confused, frequently ridiculous, and, in the final pages, incomprehensible.