Anna Karenina
SynopsisPlot
The heroine of Tolstoy's epic of love and self-destruction, Anna Karenina has beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son, but feels that her life is empty until she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike, and brings jealousy and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
Story
About this book
Anna Karenina, first published in serial form between 1875 and 1877, is one of Leo Tolstoy's longest and most widely read novels. It follows Anna, a woman of status and comfort in imperial Russian society, who begins an affair with Count Vronsky, a young military officer. The relationship upends her standing in Moscow and St. Petersburg social circles and strains her connection to her husband and young son. Tolstoy traces the consequences of this affair with close attention to social pressure, emotional isolation, and the customs that governed aristocratic life in nineteenth-century Russia.
Running parallel to Anna's story is the arc of Konstantin Levin, a landowner who struggles with questions of purpose, faith, and belonging on his rural estate. Levin's sections draw on Tolstoy's own experiences managing agricultural land and grappling with philosophical doubt. The two storylines rarely intersect directly, but they mirror each other in their attention to what holds a life together and what pulls it apart.
This Penguin Classics edition uses a translation that has been recognized for its closeness to Tolstoy's Russian prose style. The novel moves between city ballrooms and country fields, between public reputation and private feeling, across a wide cast of characters.
