Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless,” Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

'..a 2007 poll of 125 contemporary authors in Time, which declared that Anna Karenina is the “greatest book ever written.”‘

Still just a romance. Ana loves Bob. Bob loves Maria. Maria loves Pedro. Pedro loves Ana. This is the crux of the book. If this is interesting to you, go right ahead and read it.

4:07/35:26 12%

I just finished this book as part of a summer read-together with friends via zoom. We broke the story up into five Zoom chats based on the parts of the book, and it was a great way to work our way through the story. This book has a lot of things to discuss, and fostered great conversations and insights. From my perspective, I'm so glad I read it. It is a story rich in detail and depth, with characters that I enjoyed reading about, even if I didn't always like them very much. This is a book that I will hold on to to read again sometime in the future. There is so much that I likely missed the first time through. For anyone who feels that this book isn't accessible to them, please give it a shot. I read the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and the writing is so good. The fact that the writing is a translation makes it even more impressive. Be prepared to like this more than you thought you might, and to need to take reading it a little slower than normal. It's a great book.