Anna Karenina (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Tolstoy, Leo; Jones, W. Gareth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199536066 ISBN 13: 9780199536061

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written.

In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization, the novel also expresses Tolstoy's own moral vision. `The correct way of putting the question is the artist's duty', Chekhov once insisted, and Anna Karenina was the work he chose to make his point. It solves no problem, but it is deeply satisfying because all the questions are put correctly.
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About this title

Review

"One of the greatest love stories in world literature" (Vladimir Nabokov)

"Tolstoy's historical and human sweep is breathtaking. His vision, humanity and his knowledge that love and pain are at the heart of life is the most important of all the profound truths revealed in this great novel" (Jonathan Dimbleby)

"In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy got totally inside the mind of a woman who is prepared to lose everything for the sake of man and who is so much in love that she commits suicide. I don't like her as a woman, but I think it is a brilliant portrait, unequalled in literature" (Amanda Craig Independent)

"I've read and re-read this novel and every time I find another layer in the story" (Philippa Gregory)

"I first read Anna Karenina 20 years ago when travelling across the Peruvian desert on a long bus journey, and it has stayed with me ever since" (Hugh Thomson Independent)

Book Description

'The greatest love story I've ever read' Andrew Davies

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199536066
• ISBN 13: 9780199536061
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 880