The greatest novel ever written – that’s the kind of thing people used to say about Anna Karenina.

The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines:

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”

Anna Karenina is one of Leo Tolstoy’s greatest literary works. It’s a masterpiece of classical literature! It’s the tale of Anna Karenina and her ultimately tragic love affair with Count Vronsky.

In Anna Karenina, faith is challenged, bonds are broken, love dies and is reborn. The novel is set in the glamorous world of the aristocracy in nineteenth century Russia. It is the tale of a woman who is asked to help save a struggling marriage. When she arrives to help her sister’s family, Anna Karenina, a respectable married woman, is introduced to a web of intrigue, passion, and transgression. 

Anna Karenina is a dramatic chronicling of the life of a family as it comes together, falls apart, and as its members discovers and redefines them. In the character of Anna, Tolstoy creates a woman who is perhaps most unhappily destined for tragedy.

Anna falls in love with Count Vronsky, only to find that her passions are uncontrollable. She might have continued the relationship in secret, but she defies the “rules,” and is forced to pay the ultimate price… She loses all contact with her son; and she is shunned from proper society (key message: “No one may build their happiness on another’s pain”, which is why things don’t work out for Anna).
Anna Karenina is commonly thought to explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and the agrarian connection to land in contrast to the lifestyles of the city…

And finally it is, at base, a story of revenge. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay”

An incredibly wonderful book! Very long, but worth every second you spend reading…

You can also watch the movie Anna Karenina with Greta Garbo. See more: http://www.garboforever.com/Film-30.htm

Ella