num_pages: 938
description: Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, Anna Karenina is Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures a breathtaking tapestry of late-nineteenth-century Russian society. As Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on Tolstoy, "We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life."
language: English
title: Anna Karenina
titlecomplete: Anna Karenina
characters: Princess Ekaterina "Kitty" Aleksandrovna Shcherbatskaya, Konstantin "Kostya" Dmitrievitch Levin, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, Count Aleksei Kirillovich Vronsky, Prince Stepan "Stiva" Arkadyevitch Oblonsky
genres: Classics, Historical, Russia, Novels, Russian Literature, Romance, Historical Fiction, Literature, 19th Century, Fiction
ratings_count: 819250
places: Russia
awards: awardedAt: 1325404800000
name: Premio literatura rusa en España, awardedAt: 1325404800000
name: Read Russia Prize
category: Classic Russian Literature for Victor Gallego Ballestero
publisher: The Modern Library