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Anna Karenina

By Leo Tolstoy
Series: Oxford World's Classics
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Anna Karenina is a profound love story centred on a beautiful, intelligent woman whose passionate affair with a dashing officer challenges her marriage and societal norms. Alongside this tumultuous romance, Tolstoy explores the more hopeful relationship of Kitty and Levin. Levin, a character reflecting Tolstoy himself, embarks on a philosophical quest for happiness. Set against the backdrop of 1870s Russian society, from St Petersburg's high society to rural Levin's estate, the novel offers a vivid, intricate portrayal of human emotion and social life.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This classic novel will appeal to readers interested in literary fiction, Russian history, and complex explorations of love, society, and philosophy. It suits those who appreciate richly detailed narratives and psychological depth.

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One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina is the story of a beautiful woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties. This major translation conveys Tolstoy's precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Love... it means too much to me, far more than you can understand.

At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties— to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance.

One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving.

Rosamund Bartlett's translation conveys Tolstoy's precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

A. N. Wilson of the Times Literary Supplement praises this edition as 'much the best English rendering which has ever appeared.'

Bob Blaisdell of the Los Angeles Review of Books describes Bartlett's translation as 'ecstatic,' capturing the authentic passion of the original Russian text with emotional accuracy and readability.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780198748847

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 14 April 2016

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Oxford University Press

Contributors:

  • Translated by Rosamund Bartlett

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 41.0mm

Width: 136.0mm

Height: 195.0mm

Weight: 612g

Pages: 896

Collections

Classic Fiction Classic General Fiction Fiction General Fiction Leo Tolstoy Literary Fiction Series: Oxford World's Classics

About the Author

Rosamund Bartlett has published widely in the fields of Russian literature and music. Her books include Wagner and Russia (CUP, 2007) and Shostakovitch in Context (OUP, 2000), as well as biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy. Her life of Tolstoy was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. As a translator she has published the first unexpurgated edition of Chekhov's letters for Penguin Classics, and her translation of Chekhov's short stories, About Love and Other Stories, for Oxford World's Classics was shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She was until 2006 Reader and Head of Department of Russian at the University of Durham, and she is the Founding Director of the Anton Chekhov Foundation, set up to preserve Chekhov's house in Yalta, for which she was awarded the Chekhov 150th Anniversary Medal in 2010 by the Russian government.

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