The Way We Live Now

38 hrs. 28 min.

Classics

Language Russian

Author Anthony Trollope

Narrator Mikhail Roslyakov

Description

Published in Russian for the first time (not counting archaic and shortened 19th-century translations)—one of the main novels by a British classic whose popularity in the English-speaking world can rival only the fame of Jane Austen (and Charles Dickens). “Trollope kills me with his mastery,” Leo Tolstoy wrote in his diary.

From Paris to London arrives Augustus Melmott, an esquire and owner of a huge fortune, rumored to be able to “raise or ruin any company by buying and selling shares,” and even, at his own discretion, to push national currency exchange rates up or down. The financier’s past is shrouded in mystery, but they say “apparently he built a railway across all of Russia, supplied the armies of the Southern states during the War of North and South, furnished weapons to Austria, and somehow bought up all the iron in England.” He acquires a mansion on Grosvenor Square and tries to purchase the estate of Pickering Park in Sussex, becomes chairman of the board of directors of a major company promising fairy-tale profits to investors, and runs for Parliament. Around him swirl hordes of idle aristocrats, greedy nouveaux riches, and cunning widows—while his daughter’s hand is pursued by the most enviable suitors in the empire. But how solid is the foundation of his success?..

The novel has been adapted for television and radio more than once; the most famous is the BBC miniseries of 2001 (in Russian television titled “Roads We Choose”), directed by David Yates (who later became famous for four Harry Potter films and all films in the “Fantastic Beasts” series). The title role was played by David Suchet, world-famous as Hercule Poirot in the “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” series (1989–2013).