Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Fiction, Classics, Literary

Anna, miserable in a loveless marriage, succumbs to the desire for the dashing Vronsky. That sort of thing didn't stand one in good stead in 19th-century Russia; bad goes to worse and the end Anna comes to is the stuff of legend. Tolstoy seamlessly captures a weaves a tapestry of Russian society -- as Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on Tolstoy, "We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life."

The novel remains popular, as demonstrated by a 2007 poll of 125 contemporary authors in Time, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest book ever written." Anna Karenina may be the greatest single novel ever written; it may also be just plainly and sublimely good. Regardless, there is no doubt that Anna Karenina (generally considered Tolstoy's finest novel) is a sublime achievement.

About the Author
Tolstoy, Leo: - "Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828 - 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood and Youth (1852-1856) and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Bevel. Tolstoy also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly Resurrection."Garnett, Constance: - "Constance Clara Garnett (née Black; 1861 - 1946) was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. Garnett was one of the first English translators of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Anton Chekhov and introduced them on a wide basis to the English-speaking public."