The 817 page book of Anna Karenina that I took home from the library was translated well by the team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
The book consists of narration on the characters' thoughts and feelings most of all, then their actions and their dialog with each other. I followed the advice given not to read any literary criticism beforehand, because it might prevent me from reading the book. It was fun to just read it without any preconceived ideas on what it was about.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
An excerpt from the Biography of Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate in the Tula region of Russia. The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya (Volkonskaya). Tolstoy's parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University. His teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn." Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about this time that he started writing.
His conversion from a dissolute and privileged society author to the non-violent and spiritual anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860–61. Others who followed the same path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the rest of his life. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."
His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary transformation when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugo's newly finished Les Miserables. A comparison of Hugo's novel and Tolstoy's War and Peace shows the influence of the evocation of its battle scenes. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Apart from reviewing Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace in French), whose title Tolstoy would borrow for his masterpiece, the two men discussed education, as Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks: "If I recount this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time."
Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded thirteen schools for his serfs' children, based on the principles Tolstoy described in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana". Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. However, as a direct forerunner to A. S. Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed to be the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. Tolstoy clashed with its editor Mikhail Katkov over political issues that arose in the final installment (Tolstoy's unpopular views of volunteers going to Serbia); therefore, the novel's first complete appearance was in book form.
Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel.
Although Russian critics dismissed 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 was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written". The novel is currently enjoying popularity, as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in "The Top Ten" in Time, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".
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Main characters
Princess Anna Arkadyevna Karenina: Stepan Oblonsky's sister, Karenin's wife and Vronsky's lover.
Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky: Lover of Anna, a cavalry officer
Prince Stepan "Stiva" Arkadyevich Oblonsky: a civil servant and Anna's brother, a man about town, 34.
Princess Darya "Dolly" Alexandrovna Oblonskaya: Stepan's wife, 33
Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin: a senior statesman and Anna's husband, twenty years her senior.
Konstantin "Kostya" Dmitrievich Levin: Kitty's suitor and then husband, old friend of Stiva, a landowner, 32.
Nikolai Dmitrievich Levin: Konstantin's elder brother, an impoverished alcoholic.
Sergius Ivanovich Koznyshev: Konstantin's half-brother, a celebrated writer, 40.
Princess Ekaterina "Kitty" Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya: Dolly's younger sister and later Levin's wife, 18.
Princess Elizaveta "Betsy": Anna's wealthy, morally loose society friend and Vronsky's cousin
Countess Lidia Ivanovna: Leader of a high society circle that includes Karenin, and shuns Princess Betsy and her circle. She maintains an interest in the mystical and spiritual
Countess Vronskaya: Vronsky's mother
Sergei "Seryozha" Alexeyich Karenin: Anna and Karenin's son
Anna "Annie": Anna and Vronsky's daughter
Varenka: a young orphaned girl, semi-adopted by an ailing Russian noblewoman, whom Kitty befriends while abroad
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