Product Description

Anna Karenina is the story of a woman who ab andons her empty existence as a society wife and embarks on a doomed love affair with the passionate but emotionally ban krupt Vronsky. It is widely acknowledged as the greatest nov el in any language '

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11779 in Books
• Published on: 1992-04-23
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1008 pages

Excerpted from Anna Karenina (Everyman's Library Classics) by Leo Tolstoy, John Bayley, Louise Maude, Aylmer Maude. Copyright © 1992. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
She had not come across Anna since the beginning of the ball, and now she suddenly saw her again in a different and unexpected light. She noticed that Anna was elated with success, a feeling Kitty herself knew so well. She saw that Anna was intoxicated by the rapture she had produced. She knew the feeling and she knew its symptoms, and recognized them in Anna – she saw the quivering light flashing in her eyes, the smile of happiness and elation that involuntarily curled her lips, and the graceful precision, the exactitude and lightness, of her movements.
‘Who is the cause?’ she asked herself. ‘All or only one?’ And without trying to help her youthful partner who was painfully struggling to carry on the conversation the thread of which he had lost, as she mechanically obeyed the merry, loud and authoritative orders of Korunsky, who commanded every one to form now a grand rond, now a chaine, she watched, and her heart sank more and more.

‘No, it is not the admiration of the crowd that intoxicates her, but the rapture of one, and that one is … can it be he?’

Every time he spoke to Anna the joyful light kindled in her eyes and a smile of pleasure curved her rosy lips. She seemed to make efforts to restrain these signs of joy, but they appeared on her face of their own accord. ‘But what of him?’ Kitty looked at him and was filled with horror. What she saw so distinctly in the mirror of Anna’s face, she saw in him. What had become of his usually quiet and firm manner and the carelessly calm expression of his face? Every time he turned towards Anna he slightly bowed his head as if he wished to fall down before her, and in his eyes there was an expression of submission and fear. ‘I do not wish to offend,’ his every look seemed to say, ‘I only wish to save myself, but I do not know how.’ His face had an expression which she had never seen before.

They talked about their mutual friends, carrying on a most unimportant conversation, but it seemed to Kitty that every word they said was deciding their and her fate. And, strange to say, they were talking about Ivan Ivanich, who made himself so ridiculous with his French, and how Miss Eletskaya could have made a better match, yet these words were unimportant for them, and they felt this as well as Kitty. A mist came over the ball and over the whole world in Kitty’s soul. Only the thorough training she had had enabled and obliged her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer the questions put to her, to talk, and even to smile. But before the mazurka began, when the chairs were already being placed for it, and several couples moved from the small to the large ball-room, Kitty was for a moment seized with dispair. She had refused five men who had asked for the mazurka and now she had no partner for it. She had not even a hope of being asked again just because she had too much success in Society for anyone to think that she was not already engaged for the dance. She must tell her mother that she was feeling ill, and go home, but she had not the strength to do it. She felt quite broken hearted.

Customer Reviews

A great love story
This remarkable story by one of the few mega-novelists of all times is an ageless story that is more real than fiction. I decided to read a copy of this book on my way to vacation last the summer and ended up spending most of my first week being glued to the book. Though it is a Russian story of a century and a half ago, its essence still resonates today.

Anna who is married to the wealthy and older Karenin lives a life of comfort without any excitement, a life that is full of routines and no zest. It is a life she had become used to until she meets the elegant Vronsky and falls in love. Now she must pay the price of adultery or seek marital stability and forgo the echoes of her heart, a soul searching trial that destabilizes the life of her family and that of her lover. In essence she abandons the meaning for her life and pursues the zest of life.

On the other hand is Levine who is in search of the meaning of life and abandons the zest of life for a purposeful life that includes a family, ideas on the advancement of humanism, being at peace with ones world and hard work in is farm and being at peace with God.

In a way, both Levine and Anna can not be blamed for opting considering one choice above the other. They all wanted happiness without having evil intentions and found a balance between the zest of life and the search of its meaning in their own different ways, hurting and find love in the process and in the end, enriching and destroying themselves in their different ways. A highly recommended read and the most insightful love story I have ever read.UNION MOUJIK,DR ZHIVAGO, EUGENE ONEGIN are some of the other books set in Russia that I enjoyed alongside ANNA KARENINA.

A timeless treasure of classical literature
Tolstoy's power of translucent description has given a life uncpative of time and space to this classical novel. It exposes the pyramid of the pre-revolutionary Russian society through the story of a mesmerising love affair, stuck in ongoing questioning of the self either as a part of a whole or a selfish periah willing to break off the formalities and hollow principles of the time.

Anna's quest for a more vibrant life otherwise full of overly materialistc delights and bordome of lonliness, brings her across with her ultimate soulmate, her lover - an every bit of a gentleman character, a curageous, popular, much sought after bachelor. Her heart, though, remains equally captive to her son whom she tries to take with her when abandoning her husband - a man of reason and utter belief in common sense of his own societal hierarchy.

Reflecting on the lives of the very poor stuck in the bottom seemingly forever and the very rich and very few, the novel resonates questions and arguments on the future of the country, of humanity as a whole in such simple narratives that its logic seems to correspond with the readers' fears and beliefs and hopes... Tolstoy's own concerns for Russia's direcion in "Anna Krenina" are of contemporary value. If Anna were Russia, her choice and indecisiveness would bring her to a deadlock, leaving her to merely hope for a miracle. How would this beauty, gifted with so much grace and talents make a break of its dark past and how she'd step into a new life remains the main question throughout the novel. What values and principles she'd take with her and which she'd abandon.

A story of hope that refuses to end at the most tragic point of the novel. Alert by Anna's fate, all the other characters suddenly get consumed with much determination and belief for a better life.

It is a most captivating novel that I'd recommend not only for literary curiosity but for those trying to understand today's Russia at all levels of that beautiful country - roots, religion, politics, history and culture.