- Published: 2 January 2014
- ISBN: 9780141199610
- Imprint: Penguin Classics
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 864
- RRP: $48.00
Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's epic novel of love, destiny and self-destruction, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.
- Published: 2 January 2014
- ISBN: 9780141199610
- Imprint: Penguin Classics
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 864
- RRP: $48.00
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About the author
Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia in 1828. He studied Oriental languages and law (although failed to earn a degree in the latter) at the University of Kazan, and after a dissolute youth eventually joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus in 1851. He took part in the Crimean War, and the Sebastopol Sketches that emerged from it established his reputation. After living for some time in St Petersburg and abroad, he married Sophie Behrs in 1862 and they had thirteen children. The happiness this brought him gave him the creative impulse for his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Later in life his views became increasingly radical as he gave up his possessions to live a simple peasant life. After a quarrel with his wife he fled home secretly one night to seek refuge in a monastery. He became ill during this dramatic flight and died at the small railway station of Astapovo in 1910.
Praise for Anna Karenina
The new and brilliantly witty translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is a must
Lisa Appignanesi, Independent, Books of the Year
Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English, and their superb rendering allows us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the palpability of Tolstoy's "characters, acts, situations"
James Wood, New Yorker