Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy, Leo. Published by Modern Library 1965. Leo Tolstoy First EDITION First PRINT. Has original dust jacket with G23 on the spine of the jacket. Published Modern Library, 1965. 1st Edition Hardcover. Water marks on exterior page edges. Otherwise no marks. Somewhat rare.

855 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1965

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

[Brendan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness if it has a consequence - a reward, it is also not goodness. Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect.”

[Mimi Bobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

very close to pulling an anna karenina myself

[Ben Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd read Anna Karenina before. I enjoyed it then. I loved it this time. The story is good and the characters complex. But the true excellence is in Tolstoy's writing. There are times when he captures a moment or a sensation so perfectly that it is like the crescendo of a symphony or stumbling across a marvellous vista.

Yes, he takes something like three chapters to describe how Levin joins his peasants to mow his fields, but every line of it is engrossing. The simplicity and beauty of the scene is captured perfectly. Or the moment when Karenin forgives Anna, which is perhaps one of the most compellingly Christian yet complex moments in literature.

Likewise, as a symphony falls into the most mournful and melodious of tunes, you feel as much as read all the tortuous longing and disappointment of Anna, Vronsky, and Karenin. And, when Kitty gives birth, the anxiety, joy, confusion, and shared pain between her and Levin is almost visceral (while somehow you still find yourself chuckling at Levin's befuddlement).

It is, in a word: brilliant.

[Deby Solar · Rating 5 out of 5]

No hay palabras para describir una obra maestra