Anna Kerenina. Ed, by George Gibian

by Leo Tolstoy

Paperback

Published January 1, 1970

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

[Anna Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this classic Russian novel 4 stars because the heart of the story was Anna and her society. Levin kept interjecting his views on the rapid changes in Russia at the time. He was such a conflicted character and so self absorbed and reactionary that was relieved to return to the doomed romance. The last section, where Levin struggles with his religious beliefs left me thinking OMG! Please get help. Seriously, Tolstoy writes his best here, when he describes the tormenting emotional conflicts of Anna and the tenderness and difficulties of motherhood. These are the everlasting truths that he has presented in this novel.

[Lindsay Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good but too long I’m sorry

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