Have anyone read Anna Karenina?

Question

I'm currently reading War and Peace from Tolstoy and find it rather deep and enjoyable. I was wanting some feedback from anyone who has read Anna Karenina, or anyone who can contrast War and Peace with Anna Karenina if you've read both and explain if I'll like it or not? thanks

Answer 1

Yes. It's a WONDERFUL novel. I really felt sad about Anna at the end. As if she was a real person.

Answer 2

Anna K. is an unusual novel: (1) it has a double plot, and the leading figures of the two plots (Anna Karenina and Konstantin Levin) meet only once, and (2) it has seven strong characters, whose stories provide ongoing similarities and contrasts. It also is set in a very distinct place and time, and the incorporation of details about events and situations give it a sense of immediacy that does not seem artificial (although it sometimes is fictitious). Tolstoi treats his characters with charity even when he doesn't like them (as is arguably the case with Stepan, the character with whom the story begins, and with Anna's husband). And, even when he likes them, he shows us their foibles: Anna, for example, not really caring for her daughter, or Levin kicking out a guest because he doesn't like the way the guest talks with his (Levin's) wife.

My book group read the novel recently, and each member of the group was the spokesperson or advocate for one of the characters. This proved a good way to encourage us to read the book attentively and it certainly helped stimulate discussion. In some ways Anna's plight seems dated now that women have more opportunities and need not remain trapped in a passionless marriage, but Anna's psychological development is so well conceived and so fully felt that it is clear she has engaged Tolstoi's sympathy, as she does that of most readers.

Finally, Levin's ruminations--on the peasantry, on marriage and the family, on the future of Russia--are of great interest, and the fact that most others (his two brothers, Stepan, his friends, Karenin) have view opposed to his helps the reader understand what was at stake for all of them in the very real disagreements and differences in perspective Tolstoi presents.

Answer 3

This a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy first published in periodical instalments from 1873 to 1877. The novel first appeared as a serial in the periodical Ruskii Vestnik (Russian: "Русский Вестник", "Russian Messenger") -- but Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over issues that arose in the final instalment. Therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.

Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered this book his first true novel. The character of Anna was likely inspired, in part, by Maria Hartung (1832–1919), the elder daughter of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy started reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of "a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow", which proved to be the first intimation of Anna's character.

Although most Russian critics panned the novel on its publication as a "trifling romance of high life", Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion is seconded by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style" and the motif of the moving train, which is subtly introduced in the first chapters (the children playing with a toy train) and inexorably developed in subsequent chapters (Anna's nightmare), thus heralding the novel's majestic finale.