Classic
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Summary
Married to a cold senior official, Anna Karenina falls into a consuming affair with the dashing Count Vronsky and is gradually destroyed by a society that punishes her honesty while tolerating discreet hypocrisy. Tolstoy sets her fall beside the story of Konstantin Levin, an awkward landowner seeking a meaningful life through work, marriage, and faith in the countryside. The novel's twin plots and its unmatched psychological detail make it a perennial candidate for the greatest novel ever written.
”
Historical Context & Significance
Tolstoy published the novel in installments between 1875 and 1877, drawing partly on a real suicide near his estate. Writers from Dostoevsky to Faulkner have ranked it at the summit of world fiction.