Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy published in serial installments from 1875-1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with editor Mikhail Katkov over political issues arising in the final installment (Tolstoy’s negative views of Russian volunteers going to fight in Serbia); therefore, the novel’s first complete appearance was in book form in 1878.

    Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Anna Karenina recounts St. Petersburg aristocrat Anna Karenina’s life story at the backdrop of the late-Nineteenth Century feudal Russian society. Not considering War and Peace a novel, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel. Fyodor Dostoyevsky declared it “flawless as a work of art.” His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired “the flawless magic of Tolstoy’s style,’ and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as “the best ever written.’ The novel remains popular, as demonstrated by a 2007 poll of 125 contemporary authors in TIME Magazine, which declared Anna Karenina as the “greatest book ever written.”