Tolstoy

The world of “Pachinko” is as complex as a Tolstoy novel, in which the fortunes of a family and the country where they struggle for love and money are tied in exhilarating ways.

The series begins with Isla offering a more profane version of the oft-quoted Tolstoy observation that all happy families are alike, but each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way.

The inside stories of messy marriage breakups have been an entertainment staple since even before Tolstoy observed that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

He mastered Russian quickly and read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the original.

Ms. Edwards said that she chose the subjects of her biographies — which also included Sonya Tolstoy, the wife of Leo Tolstoy — for the themes she believed they personified.