Tolstoy, Leo "Anna Karenina"

Tolstoy, Leo (Толстой, Лев Николаевич) "Anna Karenina" (Russian: Анна Каренина/Anna Karenina) - 1877

I love classics, therefore, I absolutely love this book. I just couldn't put it down. It's a wonderful story.

A story about love and deceipt, the morale of the 19th century, this novel describes the history of three Russian families of nobility, their joys and problems.

I didn't like Anna or her lover Vronsky much (especially him) but liked most of the other characters well, especially Kitty and Levin. The writing is so wonderful, you think those people are real.

I also watched one of the mini series that was filmed a couple of years ago and had the same impression. Everyone in our book club, with one exception, I believe, loved it, as well. I liked it so much, I will definitely want to read a lot more of Tolstoy.

We discussed this in our international book club in  August 2005.

From the back cover:

"'Anna Karenina' tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness. While previous versions have softened the robust, and sometimes shocking, quality of Tolstoy's writing, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have produced a translation true to his powerful voice. This award-winning team's authoritative edition also includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. Beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable, this 'Anna Karenina' will be the definitive text for generations to come.

'Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English, and their superb rendering allows us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the palpability of Tolstoy's 'characters, acts, situations.' (James Wood, 'The New Yorker')"

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.