Anna Karenina : a novel in eight parts / Leo Tolstoy ; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky with a preface by John Bayley Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910

User activity

Send to:
View the summary of this work
Author
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910
Subjects
Married women - Fiction.; Russia - Social life and customs - 1533-1917 - Fiction.; Love stories.
Audience
General; Adult; Juvenile
Summary
Anna Karenina is the wife of a prominant Russian government official. She leads a correct but confining upper-middle-class existence. She seems content with her life as a proper companion to her dignified, unaffectionate husband and an adoring mother to her young son, until she meets Count Vronsky, a young officer of the guards. He pursues her and she falls madly in love with him. Her husband refuses to divorce her, so she gives up everything, including her beloved son, to be with Vronsky. After a short time, Vronsky becomes bored and unhappy with their life as social outcasts. He abandons her, returns to the military and is immediately accepted back into society. Anna, a fallen woman, shunned by respectable society, throws herself under a train. A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, Anna Karenina portrays the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the discreet affair that her cold, ambitious husband (and Russian high society) would condone, she is doomed. Set against the tragic love of Anna and Vronsky, the plight of the melancholy nobleman Konstantine Levin unfolds. In doubt about the meaning of life, haunted by thoughts of suicide, Levin's struggles echo Tolstoy's own spiritual crisis. But Anna's inner turmoil mirrors the own emotional imprisonment and mental disintegration of a woman who dares to transgress the strictures of a patriarchal world. In Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy brought to perfection the novel of social realism and created a masterpiece that bared the Russian soul.
Sample
Sample text
Wikipedia
Read associated articles: Anna Karenina, Maya Plisetskaya
Bookmark
http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/3426910
Work ID
3426910

183 editions of this work

Find a specific edition

Refine your editions:

Close facets

Collapse Format

Collapse Language

Collapse Decade

Collapse Edition

Collapse Availability

Thumbnail [View as table] [View as grid] Title, Author, Edition Date Language Format Libraries

User activity


e.g. test cricket, Perth (WA), "Parkes, Henry"

Separate different tags with a comma. To include a comma in your tag, surround the tag with double quotes.

Be the first to add this to a list

Comments and reviews

What are comments? Add a comment

No user comments or reviews for this work

Add a comment


Show comments and reviews from Amazon users