{"id":4505,"date":"2025-04-10T23:17:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T11:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2025-08-30T22:12:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T10:12:51","slug":"the-book-of-anna-carmen-boullosa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2025\/04\/10\/the-book-of-anna-carmen-boullosa\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Anna \u2013 Carmen Boullosa"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-113x150.jpg 113w, https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-1200x1600.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/the-book-of-anna-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In Leo Tolstoy\u2019s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2019\/09\/30\/anna-karenina-leo-tolstoy\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"2364\">Anna Karenina<\/a><\/em>, it is mentioned in passing that Anna is writing a book. Carmen Boullosa has taken this idea and written what amounts to a fan fiction. The main characters are new, but they do interact with characters from the original novel. There are some mind-bending metafictional effects too \u2013 the characters from <em>Anna Karenina<\/em> know they are fictional, and the other characters know it too, and it is a point of discussion amongst them<em>.<\/em> Tolstoy himself appears as well, unsurprisingly having a rough time being in the page instead of writing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book doesn\u2019t really have the same feel as <em>Anna Karenina<\/em>. I wonder if that\u2019s because the original (<em>El libro de Ana<\/em>) was written in Spanish rather than Russian. I suppose it would be difficult to translate a book from Spanish and make it sound Russian. Maybe if you first translated it to Russian, then to English\u2026 anyway. The one slightly disappointing thing about <em>The Book of Anna<\/em> is that Anna\u2019s book (two books really) hardly figures in the plot, although the entirety of Anna\u2019s book (revised for this novel) is presented as part of the <em>The Book of Anna<\/em>. It\u2019s a definite departure from the main story and makes this book stand out on its own.<\/p>\n<!-- wpsso rrssb get buttons: buttons on archive option not enabled -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Leo Tolstoy\u2019s Anna Karenina, it is mentioned in passing that Anna is writing a book. Carmen Boullosa has taken this idea and written what amounts to a fan fiction. The main characters are new, but they do interact with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2025\/04\/10\/the-book-of-anna-carmen-boullosa\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,256,179,63],"class_list":["post-4505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-books","tag-carmen-boullosa","tag-leo-tolstoy","tag-novels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4508,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions\/4508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}