Anna Karenina
Vladimir Nabokov once called this 'one of the greatest love stories in world literature', and it's hard to argue with him. Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's sweeping novel of passion and ruin, centres on a woman who seems to have everything. Beauty, wealth, a respected place in society, a son she adores. And yet it feels hollow to her, until the charming and reckless Count Vronsky walks into her life. What follows is an affair that shocks her family and her social circle in equal measure, pulling jealousy and resentment along in its wake like a tide. It's gripping, painful, and at times almost unbearable to watch. Running alongside Anna's story is that of Levin, a man quietly wrestling with questions of purpose and happiness. His journey offers a striking contrast, grounded and searching where Anna's burns bright and destructive. Scholars have long read Levin as Tolstoy's own self-portrait, and there's a raw honesty to those chapters that lends the whole novel its peculiar weight. This translation, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky with a preface by John Bayley, has been widely praised as the most authoritative English rendering of the text. A novel that rewards every page of the commitment it asks of you.
- Author: Leo Tolstoy
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Classic Literature
- ISBN: 978-0140449174
- Pages: 864 pages