Love Stories: Love In Translation

Love truly is universal, crossing boundaries and languages. Here is our pick of love stories from around the world that truly translate to us all.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

A passionately charged and tragic love affair between Anna and Vronsky is contrasted with that of Kitty and Levin, one of the sweetest and most gentle romances in literature. Also unlike most romances, the novel continues past their wedding day.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos

Lust, power, seduction and revenge feature in this wonderfully charged novel. It remains a particularly wicked and sophisticated treat.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Flaubert’s debut novel features a kind yet unexceptional provincial doctor marrying a woman whose expectations have been raised unrealistically high due to her reading diet of too many romantic novels. Perhaps a lesson for us all there…

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Pasternak’s tale of a rich industrialist’s son who embraces the revolution takes a turn for the worse when the woman he loves is exiled. It caused outrage in the USSR at the time of publication yet went on to win him a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Murakami’s haunting and original debut novel is a tale of loss and burgeoning sexuality. Japanese student Toru Watanabe looks back at his relationships with two very different women — the emotionally troubled Naoko, and the outgoing, lively Midor.

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

Written when Sagan was just 17, Bonjour Tristesse wonderfully captures the confusion we all feel as we grow closer to adulthood. The teenage Sagan finds out that meddling in the romantic affairs of others can lead to particularly disastrous consequences.