Anna Karenina

Description

Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as 'flawless', Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness. Anna Karenina was first serialized over five years in The Russian Messenger, and then published as a two-volume novel in 1878. Tolstoy’s second novel, it was significant in cementing his role as the primary Russian author of his age. Drawing on his own aristocratic upbringing to set the scene for the novel, it is widely believed that the character of Konstantin Levin was based on his own experiences and struggles with religion.

№ 27 in The Guardian's 100 Greatest Novels Of All Time.

Part of the Harvard Classics set.

This book has 350,718 words, 706 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1877. This translation by Constance Garnett was first published in 1901.

Production notes: This ebook of Anna Karenina was published by Global Grey in 2020, and updated on the 3rd January 2023. The artwork used for the cover is 'Portrait of a Young Woman' by Aleksey Kolesov.