Want a NOOK? Explore Now
First published in 1878, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is the tragic story of aristocrat Anna Karenina and her ill-fated affair with the cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Although passionately in love, the couple find their romance doomed by the sexual mores of their time and place, and the double standards that apply to men and women. The tale's panoramic sweep and Tolstoy's colorful depcition of Russia and the European continent are virtually unparallelled in world literature. This novel, in the estimation of William Faulkner, is "the best ever written."
Anna Karenina is one of Barnes & Noble's leatherbound classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world's greatest authors in an exquisitely designed bonded leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and an attractive ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offers hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensible cornerstone for any home library.
He took part in the Crimean war and after the defence of Sevastopol wrote The Sevastopol Sketches (1855-6), which established his literary reputation. After leaving the army in 1856 Tolstoy spent some time mixing with the literati in St Petersburg before traveling abroad and then settling at Yasnaya Polyana, where he involved himself in the running of peasant schools and the emancipation of the serfs. His marriage to Sofya Andreyevna Behrs in 1862 marked the beginning of a period of contentment centred around family life; they had thirteen children. Tolstoy managed his vast estates, continued his educational projects, cared for his peasants and wrote both his great novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877).
During the 1870s he underwent a spiritual crisis, the moral and religious ideas that had always dogged him coming to the fore. A Confession (1879–82) marked an outward change in his life and works; he became an extreme rationalist and moralist, and in a series of pamphlets written after 1880 he rejected church and state, indicted the demands of flesh, and denounced private property. His teachings earned him numerous followers in Russia and abroad, and also led finally to his excommunication by the Russian Holy Synod in 1901. In 1910 at the age of eighty-two he fled from home "leaving this worldly life in order to live out my last days in peace and solitude;" he died some days later at the station master's house at Astapovo.
Author biography courtesy of Penguin Books LTD.
Nick_The_Book_Lover
Posted February 19, 2011
This is one of the greatest, most beautiful and most heartbreaking novels ever written. No wonder Oprah Winfrey selected it, even though it was written well over a hundred years ago!
90 out of 93 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 21, 2011
Nook edition of Anna Karenina is the best book.
88 out of 89 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 21, 2011
nice to see this book title anna karenina..
85 out of 89 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 8, 2011
Oprah was right about this one ... a truly amazing, indeed, life changing book. Highly, highly, highly recommended.
85 out of 86 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.ereaderbookworm
Posted March 12, 2011
I Also Recommend:
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is all that and then some, but let's talk translations. This is the same 1901 rendering by Constance Garnett used in most of the e-editions out there. Though familiar (especially for its opening sentence), it is widely criticized for its deficiencies and considered a poor choice among better alternatives. The 1918 Maude translation is far better. It is the one most read in college literature classes. The Norton Critical Edition uses the Maude translation, with some revisions by George Gibian. That edition has not been published for e-readers, but a good NOOK edition of the Maude translation is attached to this review (or search "Anna Karenina Maude"). The 2000 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is the one associated with Oprah's Book Club. Oprah selected the novel itself more than a particular translation, but a print edition of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation was featured on her website, so people think of that one as Oprah's pick. The NOOK edition is attached to this review (or search "Anna Karenina Pevear"). It is a matter of taste which translation is preferable, the Maude or the Peavear and Volokhonsky. The influence of the translator is second only to the author in shaping the text. The quality of the translation is crucial.
76 out of 77 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.ArgoKR
Posted March 29, 2010
Don't buy this e-book. It is full of typographical errors. I am so disappointed! I am only a few pages into this book and I cannot believe the poor quality. How hard can it be to get it correct. I have asked for a refund, we'll see how that goes...... ArgoKR
32 out of 36 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.cpkx
Posted January 15, 2010
I don't recall ever reading an ebook with more blatant errors. Although most of the misspelled/partial words can be deciphered, it greatly detracts from the readability. It is obvious that no effort went into the making of this book other than a likely OCR scan from what may have been a poor quality original text. A simple running of a spell checker could have probably caught at least 95% of the errors, but that would still amount to thousands of corrections.
22 out of 25 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This is one of the best novels I've read but this digital copy has so many spelling errors that it became annoying within reading the first few pages. Find another copy if you can. This novel really is worth paying a little extra money.
18 out of 20 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.megsy_g
Posted August 11, 2010
I wish I had read the other reviews before I bought this one! I'd always wanted to read the book, so didn't think I needed to check out ratings. The frequency of typing/spelling errors was mindboggling, and should have been caught by any basic spell check; there was at least one on every page. Every couple of days, I would go back to it and try to give it another shot, but I would give up in irritation after a few pages. There's no excuse for publishing such a poor quality version of this classic.
14 out of 16 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.GreekLady
Posted July 20, 2010
There are 6 typos per page on average, the book had gotten digitized, and never corrected. Save your 99 cents and download for free from Project Gutenberg. I expected better quality control from B&N.
14 out of 16 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Irwing
Posted July 2, 2010
Of course Tolstoy is marvelous. However, this particular E-book publication is horrible. There are at least two spelling errors on each page. Get another printing of this book.
11 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted August 19, 2010
The lack of editing in this eBook is a disgrace!!!!! I cannot believe B&N had the audacity to charge for this disaster - Never-ending spelling mistakes and typos - it becomes impossible to read with so many errors.
10 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.wannabeinbrd
Posted July 3, 2010
I have always loved this book but there are so many extreme typos on each page, that the book is unreadable. It looks as though they put a typewriter in a cage of monkeys. A huge disappointment.
9 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted August 3, 2010
This story is good and I have no problem with the book itself, however, the B&N version is terrible. There are spelling errors and typos on nearly every "page". Not worth the $.99.
6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.warlotte
Posted June 6, 2010
Like several other reviewers, I was very frustrated by the huge number of typos in this e-book. I'm shocked at the poor quality - it's a disgrace to this amazing work of art. I love my nook -- fortunately I read other typo-free books on it before this one. I was so pleased to see such a great e-book deal for Anna Karenina but have since gone back to my paper version because of all the errors.
Did I hear that there are other e-versions of the book that are typo-free?
3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 1, 2010
I am a new Nook book reader. I have noticed some spelling and spacing errors in a few of the books I have read. Anna Karenina is a great story but this book is so badly misspelled it was hard to read. The book is 822 pages and trying to read through all the misspelling was horrible. I didn't read any reviews before purchasing it and maybe I should have. I was tempted to go out and purchase a copy of the book so I could appreciate the story better. I don't know where the books are transcribed but it couldn't have been run through a spell check. It was sad to see a classic so poorly treated.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 30, 2012
Missing a huge chunk, all out of order, some spelling mistakes. I was so excited about my nook and this version showed me the medium's short comings, very sad. I hope other books I buy are not like this. I will definitely read the reviews before I buy on the nook from now on. Barnes and Noble should try to filter these out.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.mamastrick
Posted August 15, 2010
I am extremely frustrated by the typographical errors in this e-version! I enjoyed the first 50 pages as far as the story, but just gave up in frustration from page after page of mispelled words and unedited copy! I am sure that when I read the original version I will love it!
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Tolstoy
Posted August 3, 2010
The copy I downloaded on my Nook is very poor. There are many misspellings and the spacing is incorrect.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.The cover of the book was the first thing that caught me - It reminded me of my favorite Yule bauble as a child. When I read the overview, I thought it sounded wonderful, so I got it.
It's a tragic story, about affairs and family, mostly. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina married her 20 year older husband Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin young, but not out of love, and she finds what she thinks is love in the young and handsome Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky; they have an affair, and she gets pregnant. Karenin is of course furious, and takes their young son Sergei "Seryozha" Alexeyich Karenin away from her, but refuses to divorce her, and leaves her miserable.
Another story in this novel is about Konstantin "Kostya" Dmitrievich Levin, who wants to marry the young Princess Ekaterina "Kitty" Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, who is the sister-in-law of Anna's brother (wow, confusing). So we get to see him deal with his own personal issues as well, which I personally found a little distracting, but okay.
Honestly, I wouldn't really recommend this 800-page novel for everyone. I'm usually used to heavy reading, though this was very difficult to read I felt, and I had difficulty in remembering which characters where who - And there are even sentences in conversations in french and german. Though the chapters are very short, only a few pages, so you can get through it. So I would recommend this to adults, maybe specialty interested young adults. Maybe if you liked the movie, and like big books, you should give it a try.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Overview
First published in 1878, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is the tragic story of aristocrat Anna Karenina and her ill-fated affair with the cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Although passionately in love, the couple find their romance doomed by the sexual mores of their time and place, and the double standards that apply to men and women. The tale's panoramic sweep and Tolstoy's colorful depcition of Russia and the European continent are virtually unparallelled in world literature. This novel, in the estimation of ...