Anna Karenina
by
Leo Tolstoy
Good Books rating 4.13
Technical:
- ID: 35
- Added: 2025-08-15
- Updated: 2025-09-03
- Publisher: Signet Classics
- Published: 1961-01-01
- Reviews: 9
A famous legend surrounding the creation of "Anna Karenina" tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval. Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs entirely to the woman whose name it bears, whose portrait is one of the truest ever made by a writer. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Reviews
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- Anna is spurned by society, which considers her adultery disgraceful.
- Anna begins to feel great jealousy for Vronsky, resenting the fact that he is free to participate in society while she is housebound and scorned.
- Despairing and dazed by the crowds, Anna throws herself under a train and dies.
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- Reading Anna Karenina was a very memorable experience.
- This book has always been inadvertently part of my life.
- Tolstoy’s storytelling is rich and emotionally deep.
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- Anna and Vronsky begin their affair, despite the risk it poses.
- Anna is in an unhappy marriage. Her husband, Alexei Karenin is an honorable but dull man, and the marriage lacks passion.
- Kitty chooses the dashing Count Vronsky and rejects Levin’s proposal of marriage.
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- While I found Anna's constant self-pity annoying, she is a great vehicle for Tolstoy to show the changing place of women in the upper echelons.
- Tolstoy’s portrayal of society is nuanced and compelling.
- The novel is as much about societal change as it is about personal tragedy.
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- Anna tells herself that his feelings constitute the whole passion of her present existence.
- Karenin shames Vronsky by saying that no matter how the two of them humiliate him, Karenin will not leave Anna.
- Devastated by Karenin's nobility, Vronsky goes home and attempts suicide.
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- Anna Karenina is widely accepted as one of – if not the – greatest novels ever written.
- It is broad in its commentary on politics, religion, industry.
- Tolstoy’s narrative weaves personal and societal issues in a way that remains relevant.
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- Anna Karenina is a woman of 1870s Russia, beautiful, intelligent, powerful to an extent, but in a stagnant marriage without love.
- Following an affair, she faces tragic consequences that reflect the harsh realities of her society.
- Her story is a poignant exploration of personal and social conflict.
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- Anna Karenina, is just not a good book.
- Not objectively. Not subjectively.
- Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina. £4 at Amazon.
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- Anna Karenina was my first experience of Tolstoy and it struck deep.
- Love goes hand in hand with deep suffering.
- It was like falling in love, as though I'd always been searching for this.