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'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Anna Karenina, the beautiful wife of a cold senior official in St Petersburg…
'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Anna Karenina, the beautiful wife of a cold senior official in St Petersburg, travels to Moscow to save her brother's marriage, and at the railway station meets Count Vronsky, a young cavalry officer. Their passion grows into an affair that society tolerates only while it is hidden; when Anna leaves her husband and son for Vronsky, she is shut out of the world that forgives him, and jealousy and isolation drive her to despair. Beside her story runs that of Levin, a landowner who loves the young Kitty and searches for the meaning of life in work among his peasants, in family and in faith.
Context and significance
Tolstoy published the novel in parts between 1875 and 1877, and its scenes of the races, the mowing and the birth of a child are among the most vivid in fiction. This translation, of 1901, is by Constance Garnett. His earlier epic is War and Peace.
About the author
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), born at Yasnaya Polyana and a veteran of the Crimean War, wrote two of the summits of the novel, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
In later life he preached simplicity and non-violence in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, a book that deeply influenced Gandhi.