Overview
Anna's passionate affair with Count Vronsky leads to social ostracism and tragedy, while Levin searches for meaning through honest work and faith.
Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina between 1873 and 1877, beginning work immediately after completing War and Peace. The novel's famous opening line ('All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way') introduces a story built around the parallel lives of Anna, who destroys her marriage in an affair, and Levin, a landowner modelled partly on Tolstoy himself. Many critics regard it as the greatest novel ever written.
Key Ideas
The Consequences of Living for Passion Alone
Desire untethered from responsibility becomes self-destructive.
The Search for Authentic Life
Lasting fulfillment comes from purposeful work and genuine human connection.
Family as Moral Center
The health of society depends on the health of its families.
Who should read this
Readers who want the full nineteenth-century novel at its peak. Anna Karenina is more intimate than War and Peace, and Levin's agricultural and spiritual questions parallel Anna's social tragedy in ways that reward close reading. The book is long but more focused than its predecessor.
Who might skip it
Skip if the Levin chapters (farming, religious searching) bore you — some readers would prefer a pure Anna novel, though Tolstoy's point is that the two stories need each other. Skip also if you're put off by the book's weight; it is not a small commitment.
The verdict
The novel I'd take to a desert island if forced to choose one. Tolstoy's depiction of Anna is among the most psychologically complete portraits of any character in any literature, and the scene of her final ride to the station is a masterpiece of novelistic construction. The Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation is the best current English version.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
If you liked this
War and Peace for the larger Tolstoy. The Kreutzer Sonata for the late, angrier Tolstoy on marriage.