Anna Karenina
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Anna Karenina
FictionRomancePsychological FictionFamily & Domestic Fiction
249 chapters
4.11from 969,691 ratingson Goodreads
"Anna Karenina" by graf Leo Tolstoy is a novel first published in book form in 1878. The story follows Anna, a married socialite in Imperial Russian society, whose extramarital affair with cavalry officer Count Vronsky scandalizes Saint Petersburg and forces them to flee to Italy. A parallel narrative traces landowner Konstantin Levin's pursuit of marriage and his struggles with faith and estate management. The novel explores themes of betrayal, family, marriage, desire, and the clash between rural and urban life against Russia's rapid social transformation.
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Serialized between 1875 and 1877 and published in book form in 1878, Anna Karenina opens with one of literature’s most famous sentences, on happy and unhappy families. Anna, the wife of a senior government official in St Petersburg, meets the cavalry officer Count Vronsky, and the attraction between them sets her against the society that has always admired her. Leo Tolstoy sets Anna’s story beside that of Konstantin Levin, a landowner who courts Kitty Shcherbatskaya and struggles with farming, faith and the question of how to live. Moving between ballrooms, estates, racecourses and railway stations, the novel examines marriage, desire, hypocrisy and conscience with a closeness to its characters’ inner lives that has made it a touchstone of the realist novel.
Characters
Anna Karenina — Protagonist
A married society woman whose love for Vronsky brings her into conflict with family and social convention.
Alexei Vronsky — Cavalry officer
A wealthy young officer whose attraction to Anna develops into a consuming attachment.
Alexei Karenin — Anna's husband
A senior government official concerned with duty, reputation, and the preservation of his marriage.
Konstantin Levin — Landowner
An earnest country gentleman searching for meaning through work, family, and faith.
Kitty Shcherbatskaya — Young noblewoman
A young woman whose changing hopes for love are closely bound to Levin's story.
Stepan Oblonsky (Stiva) — Anna's brother
A charming, pleasure-loving official whose infidelity unsettles his household.
Darya Oblonskaya (Dolly) — Stiva's wife
Kitty's elder sister, struggling to care for her children and sustain a troubled marriage.
About the author
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was a Russian novelist and thinker, born on his family’s estate of Yasnaya Polyana, south of Moscow, into an old aristocratic family. Orphaned as a child, he left university without a degree and served in the army in the Caucasus and in the Crimean War, experiences that went into his early stories and Sevastopol Sketches. In 1862 he married Sophia Behrs, who bore him thirteen children and copied out his manuscripts. On the estate he wrote War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna Karenina (1875–1877). A spiritual crisis in the late 1870s, described in A Confession, led him to a radical Christianity of non-violence, simplicity and rejection of property and the state; he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901, and his ideas influenced Gandhi. His later works include The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Resurrection. At eighty-two he left home secretly and died at a remote railway station in 1910.