Anna Karenina

by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy 1828-1910 Gra

Overview

Anna Karenina is the wife of a prominant Russian government official. She leads a correct but confining upper-middle-class existence. She seems content with her life as a proper companion to her dignified, unaffectionate husband and an adoring mother to her young son, until she meets Count Vronsky, a young officer of the guards. He pursues her and she falls madly in love with him. Her husband refuses to divorce her, so she gives up everything, including her beloved son, to be with Vronsky. After a short time, Vronsky becomes bored and unhappy with their life as social outcasts. He abandons her, returns to the military and is immediately accepted back into society. Anna, a fallen woman, shunned by respectable society, throws herself under a train.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783732632237
Publisher:	Outlook Verlag
Publication date:	04/04/2018
Pages:	1174
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 2.29(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

León Tolstoi (Leo Tolstoy) was a Russian novelist, essayist, and dramatist considered a master of realist fiction. His most famous works include the novels The Death of Ivan Ilych, and War and Peace.

Read an Excerpt

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Anna Karenina"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Leo Tolstoy.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Note on the Text and Translation
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Leo Tolstoy
Principal Characters and Guide to Pronunciation
ANNA KARENINA
Explanatory Notes

What People are Saying About This

Caryl Emerson

"Tolstoy did not wish to please; he wished to correct, instruct, inspire, persuade.  And as Marian Schwartz notes, he “wholly intended to bend language to his will.”  In her astonishing new translation, she takes seriously Tolstoy’s disgust with smooth Russian literary style, setting a new standard in English for accuracy to Tolstoyan repetition, sentence density and balance, stripped-down vocabulary and enhanced moral weight. A rough, powerful, unromantic Anna that wakes the reader up and rings true."—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Reading Group Guide

1. When Anna Karenina was published, critics accused Tolstoy of writing a novel with too many characters, too complex a story line, and too many details. Henry James called Tolstoy's works "baggy monsters." In response, Tolstoy wrote of Anna Karenina "I am very proud of its architecture-its vaults are joined so that one cannot even notice where the keystone is." What do you make of Tolstoy's use of detail? Does it make for a more "realistic" novel?

2. The first line of Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, " can be interpreted a number of ways. What do you think Tolstoy means by this?

3. In your opinion, how well does Tolstoy, as a male writer, capture the perspectives of his female characters? Do you think Anna Karenina is the most appropriate title for the book? Is Tolstoy more critical of Anna for her adultery than he is of Oblonsky or of Vronsky?

4. What role does religion play in the novel? Compare Levin's spiritual state of mind at the beginning and the end of the novel. What parallels can you draw between Levin's search for happiness and Anna's descent into despair?

5. Why is it significant that Karenina lives in St. Petersburg, Oblonsky in Moscow, and Levin in the country? How are Moscow and St. Petersburg described by Tolstoy? What conclusions can you draw about the value assigned to place in the novel?

6. What are the different kinds of love that Anna, Vronsky, Levin, Kitty, Stiva, and Dolly seek? How do their desires change throughout the novel?

7. How do the ideals of love and marriage come into conflict inAnna Karenina? Using examples from the novel, what qualities do you think seem to make for a successful marriage? According to Tolstoy, is it more important to find love at all costs or to uphold the sanctity of marriage, even if it is a loveless one?

8. Ultimately, do you think Anna Karenina is a tragic novel or a hopeful one?

Editorial Reviews

Originally written in 1875, this is one of the most distinguished classic works of world literature. Several films, dramas, and ballets have been based on Tolstoi’s (as spelled in Spanish) intense, passionate love story. Ana, one of the most notable literary characters ever created, is married to a Russian minister but falls in love with Count Vronski, a rich and handsome young army officer. Against society’s norms, she abandons her husband and son, with dire results. In this excellent recording, the story is fully dramatized by a group of actors: Milagros del Valle is Ana, and FonoLibro’s Arquimedes Rivero is Vronski. Their voices are appropriate and devoid of regional accents. With background music and narration that shows the full emotional style of a radionovela (radio soap operas), this audio is an easy way to get to know this perennial classic. Recommended for bookstores and public libraries.—Dolores M. Koch, New York City

—Dolores M. Koch

Criticas

"The greatest novel ever written" is a superlative applied frequently to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which first appeared in print in 1875. This world literature classic has inspired dozens of stage, movie, and ballet adaptation, the latest of which is the Universal Pictures September release film starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law. This official movie tie-in contains a fine translation by Louise Maude and Alymer Maude and the screenplay by Tom Stoppard. If you haven't read it yet; it's time.

Longlisted for the 2015 American Literary Translators Asssociation, National Translation Prize in Prose. 

National Translation Awards - NTA

If there is a Tolstoyan out there who is interested in reading a translation that is exquisitely mindful of the book’s complex texture, or someone who has meant to get to Karenina but hasn’t yet got around to this particular pleasure, Schwartz’s tribute to Tolstoy’s craft and sensitivity should be at the top of the list.”—Jim Kates, Arts Fuse

Arts Fuse - Jim Kates

"Tolstoy did not wish to please; he wished to correct, instruct, inspire, persuade. And as Marian Schwartz notes, he “wholly intended to bend language to his will.” In her astonishing new translation, she takes seriously Tolstoy’s disgust with smooth Russian literary style, setting a new standard in English for accuracy to Tolstoyan repetition, sentence density and balance, stripped-down vocabulary and enhanced moral weight. A rough, powerful, unromantic Anna that wakes the reader up and rings true."—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Caryl Emerson

The translation is the most accurate Tolstoy we have in English. Marian Schwartz has been a major force in bringing Russian literature into English for many years, but this is her masterpiece.”—Michael Holquist, author of Dostoevsky and the Novel

Michael Holquist

"Oxford University Press recently added three of the most acclaimed czarist era novels to its Classics Hardback Collection: Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Each is a new translation prefaced lucidly by an acclaimed scholar in the field. Both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, though in increasingly different yet overlapping ways, stirred profound debates on pressing philosophical and spiritual questions, essentially, how to live, especially in a world of accelerating change." - The Shepherd Express

From the Publisher