Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1828–1910 · Russia
Originally Anna Karenina (Russian)
Why it matters
An adulterous passion and a searching marriage, braided into the supreme novel of family life. 'All happy families are alike...' opens fiction's most perfect big book: the one novelists themselves most often call the greatest.
At a glance
family sagatragedypsychological novel
Difficulty 5/10medium pace864 pagesLong and multi-stranded but told in clear, patient realist prose throughout.
Deep dive
Why Tolstoy spends as much time on Levin's mowing fields and marriage proposals as he does on Anna's affair — and why that counterpoint, not the affair alone, is the whole argument.
