Anna Karenina

In Anna Karenina Tolstoy gave the world one of the best loved heroines of literature. Her charm dominates the novel, but there is also a feeling of ultimate doom always approaching. Anna, despite and because of her actions, is a sympathetic character. Although desperate to escape from her stifling marriage, she is uncertain and vulnerable. She eventually does escape, but the outcome is not as desirable as she wished, and ends in tragedy.

The novel also follows in parallel the story of Levin, a country landowner, who desires to marry Kitty, a relative of Anna’s. In Levin’s story there is more hope, but his life too is a difficult one, with the problems he faces in his marriage and his struggle, mirroring Tolstoy’s own, to bring social justice to his serfs.

Anna Karenina addresses the very nature of society at many levels, but is also a novel that explores the thoughts and interactions of indivduals. Tolstoy uses his powerful descriptive style and his technique of getting completely inside the heads of his major characters to pick out the contradictions and complexities of existence. His method borders on the stream-of-consciousness that would be used by modernist writers such as James Joyce, Virgina Woolf and William Faulkner.

Together with War and Peace, Anna Karenina is justifiably regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written.

This edition features:
Introduction
Biography of Tolstoy
List of Main Characters
Bibliography