Leo Tolstoy – Michael A. Kahn

Fathers and Sons and the Iliad: An Apology to Homer

Posted on March 20, 2021April 4, 2021 by Michael Kahn

I confess to a failure to appreciate certain works of literature that bask in universal acclaim. One example triggered my apology to Tolstoy for failing to love Anna Karenina–a novel on every list of the greatest works of world literature. And for years I felt a similar bafflement over my lukewarm reaction to Homer’s The…

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Most Important Books of All Time? Let the Debate Begin!

Posted on February 26, 2019February 26, 2019 by Michael Kahn

Last summer I wrote a post about a cool web page that had created road maps for your favorite road-trip novels, from Jack Kerouac’s cross-country trip in On the Road to The Cruise of the Rolling Junk, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of the journey he took with his wife Zelda from Connecticut to Alabama in…

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I’m Sorry, Anna.

Posted on December 9, 2017October 26, 2019 by Michael Kahn

For more years than I’d care to admit, my take on Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina was perfectly summed up by fellow Missourian Mark Twain, who famously defined a “classic” as a novel “that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” But then a few months ago, while browsing my bookshelves in…

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God or Huck Finn: Who Should Tell Your Story?

Posted on September 15, 2016September 14, 2016 by Michael Kahn

An online discussion among several of my fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors got me thinking about the one decision every fiction author must make before typing CHAPTER 1 at the top of the page. That decision? Who will tell your story? “Huh,” a baffled reader may wonder, “doesn’t the author tell the story?” Only rarely….

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