Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's tragic epic of a married aristocrat's affair, set against a panorama of Russian society and one man's search for meaning.
Tolstoy opens with one of literature’s most famous lines about happy and unhappy families, then tells two intertwined stories. Anna, a married noblewoman, risks everything for a passionate affair that society will not forgive, while the landowner Levin searches, more quietly, for meaning and faith. Around them Tolstoy paints a vast picture of Russian life. The result is both an intimate tragedy and a sweeping inquiry into love, duty, and how to live.
Recommended by 2 People
Keith McNally
Anna Karenina is my absolute favorite book in the world, a monumental tale of doomed passion in which Tolstoy gives a panoramic view of Russia in the 1870s, when the scent of revolution was already in the air.
Oprah Winfrey
From Stiva's debts and infidelity to Levin's idealized dream of a wife and family—from Nikolai's drunken Communist rants to Kitty's naive and passionate heart—Tolstoy weaves an extravagant web.
Book Club · May 2004
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