Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.733
EAN: 9780192100351
ISBN: 0192100351
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1024
Publication Date: 1999-09-16
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA

Many believe Anna Karenina to be the greatest novel ever written. The impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky, is set against the marriage of Levin and Kitty, illuminating the most important questions which beset humanity. This edition uses Louise and Aylmer Maude's classic translation--still unsurpassed--and is printed here with a new introduction and detailed annotation.

Customer Rating:
Summary: An amazing novel
Comment: Anna Karenina. She was an amazing woman. But no less amazing than the other characters in the novel. Tolstoy was a brilliant man and writer. He knows how to blend plot and thought like few others. After reading his novels, I am convinced that he was a keen observer of human nature and interactions. I believe he must have spent hours reflecting on why people act in the way they do. And the result, clear and penetrating novels on the human experience.

I highly recommend this novel. I feel enriched for having read something so well written. Just the way that Tolstoy mixes words leaves me with a feeling of awe. This novel is much more direct than War and Peace. He left his characters out of his writing in War and Peace, while he digressed about other topics. In this novel, digression sometimes happens in his dealings with Levin, but not as frequently as in War and Peace. The novel is great, the plot is fantastic. I see similarities to War and Peace everywhere. Natasha and Kitty. Levin and Nikolay. Tolstoy's dislike of the medical profession.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Lovely Classical Literature
Comment: I have read all of Tolstoy's works and though I love them all, Anna Karenina is my most treasured. I have read this book atleast a dozen times and never get tired of reading it. I love how high society is always portrayed in Tolstoy's works as "naughty" (wink). But mostly I fall in love with the tragic heroine, torn between the love of her only son and her adulterous lover. Her affair in the end consumes her, and Anna's life takes a tragic turn. A story that stands up to the test of time.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: both timeless and of its era
Comment: Many themes of Anna Karenina are timeless: marriage, infidelity, the roles of men and women, personal fulfillment, honor, spirituality, and naturalism. If that isn't enough, then Tolstoy offers an 18th-century look at Russian society and culture, still well before the run-up to the revolution. Don't look to Tolstoy for enlightened feminism, although one of the characters argues for education and equality for women, and one of the minor threads relates to the status of peasants.

Tolstoy is not especially subtle in portraying his characters, full of emotion and conflict. Nobody is idealized, yet all still prompt some sympathy. The main characters are so richly drawn. Anna's decline was inevitable, but it's the loss of someone far from pure evil, with her significant talents and deep capacity for love.

Read Brothers Karamazov and Anna K at around the same time, as I did, and you'll get an excellent opportunity to compare two of the greatest Russian novelists head-to-head. Two thousand pages well spent.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Sometimes it's great to be a putz ...
Comment: I'm probably one of the very few people who read this classic without having a clue as to the ending (no, never saw the movie--still haven't) ... so it was a genuine surprise and it rocked me. The opening line is a killer ... nothing else like it in all of literature. Although I prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy, this is a genuine masterpiece.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I really like this book, but...
Comment: It's really hard to understand sometimes! Anna Karenina is the famous Tolstoy tale of a wife who has an affair. At first, I wanted to quit it was such a difficult read, but once I got through it, I loved it. I have to say, I thought Kitty and Levin's relationship was really cute, especially when they finally kissed! I was super-sad when Anna killed herself, it just sucked that was so sorrowful that she felt the need to die. I didn't really like Vronsky, he seemed sort of like a jerk who just lost interest in Anna, after she left her husband and son for him. I like the parallels between Anna and Levin. Sometimes, it did get a little boring, like when Levin worked with some peasants in a field, it took like, a huge portion of the book to explain about the field-work. Also, I got a little confused when Levin started to believe in God. All in all, a good read, not for those who get bored easily, though.

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