Chapter 4, Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", starts:

"All three Yepanchin girls were sturdy young ladies, tall and blooming, with magnificent shoulders, powerful bosoms, and strong, almost masculine arms; as a consequence of their health and strength they naturally enjoyed eating well on occasions, something they took no pains to conceal".

15 short pages later, we are apprised of the abuse of an orphaned girl by a middle-aged aristocrat over a number of years; the determination of the abused to take revenge; and the bizarre marketplace of arranged marriage among the upper classes in the 19th century, in which one family holds disproportionate power by dint of genetic accident.

Such is the transportative power of great literature.