Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Volume 1

by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina is a realist novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, originally published in 1877, and translated to English by Constance Garnett in 1901, a complex novel in eight parts, with more than a dozen major characters, Tolstoy called it his first true novel. Tolstoy's style in Anna Karenina is considered by many critics to be transitional, forming a bridge between the realist and modernist novel. some writers consider it the greatest work of literature ever written, waste no time, you should read it.

645 pages, Paperback

Published July 24, 2021

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His 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 twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reviews

[Kalina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewing a Classic seems unnecessary and redundant, but I can comment on the translation. I sampled the Maudes and Pevear+Volokhonsky's translations but ultimately decided to stick with Constance Garnett. Although there were a couple passages that were tiny bit convoluted (pretty good for 1200pp), I found it superior to the rest with her use of vocabulary and proper character names, which have not been altered to be more palatable for foreign readers.