Vladimir Nabokov called Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina “one
of the greatest love stories in world literature.” Matthew Arnold
claimed it was not so much a work of art as “a piece of life.” Set
in imperial Russia, Anna Karenina is a rich and complex meditation
on passionate love and disastrous infidelity.
Married to a powerful government minister, Anna Karenina is a
beautiful woman who falls deeply in love with a wealthy army
officer, the elegant Count Vronsky. Desperate to find truth and
meaning in her life, she rashly defies the conventions of Russian
society and leaves her husband and son to live with her lover.
Condemned and ostracized by her peers and prone to fits of jealousy
that alienate Vronsky, Anna finds herself unable to escape an
increasingly hopeless situation.
Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin,
a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While
Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own
search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard
work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of
characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a
breathtaking tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society.
From its famous opening sentence—“Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”—to its stunningly
tragic conclusion, this enduring tale of marriage and adultery
plumbs the very depths of the human soul.
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