Anna Karenin (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Leo Tolstoy (Author), Rosemary Edmonds (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 1954

A magnificent drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, "Anna Karenina" is the moving story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Tolstoy's masterful novel is one of the greatest works of world literature...it is a novel of social realism that perfectly bares the Russian soul, set against the fascinating panorama of life in nineteenth-century Russia.
With a full-cast and stirring music, this compelling story of one woman's fate is brought to life in this powerful BBC production.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Count Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula province, and educated privately. He studied Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan, then led a life of pleasure until 1851 when he joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus. He took part in the Crimean War and after the defence of Sebastopol he wrote The Sebastopol Sketches (1855-6), which established his reputation. After a period in St Petersburg and abroad, where he studied educational methods for use in his school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, he married Sofya Andreyevna Behrs in 1862. The next fifteen years was a period of great happiness; they had thirteen children, and Tolstoy managed his vast estates in the Volga Steppes, continued his educational projects, cared for his peasants and wrote War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life; he became an extreme moralist and in a series of pamphlets after 1880 expressed his rejection of state and church, indictment of the weaknesses of the flesh and denunciation of private property. His teaching earned him numerous followers at home and abroad, but also much opposition, and in 1901 he was excommuincated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramamtic flight from home, at the small railway station of Astapovo. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; 1st edition (July 30, 1954)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140440410
• ISBN-13: 978-0140440416
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #777,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote two of the great novels of the nineteenth century, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the top ten of all time, May 7, 2000

By 

Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anna Karenin (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Tolstoy was a "giant, striding through the world with his eyes wide open and his nostrils flaring." He didn't miss much. After reading this and his other great work, War and Peace, I was pretty much dumbfounded by his accomplishment. To me, one halmark of true art, whether it be the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven's ninth, King Lear, Paradise Lost, Faust, etc. is how they are even conceived, much less carried off. I am in awe of very few authors, but Tolstoy has to rank as one of the true big leaguers, and this novel captures him at the height of his powers, when he was throwing about a hundred miles an hour, plus. No one could hit him, not even Dostoevsky, and certainly not Turgenev. I think he does an even better job than Flaubert (another of my heroes) at portraying a woman as his central character. I can't speak from experience, obviously, but both Emma and Anna come across as realistically fleshed-out, multi-dimensional figures. I probably lean towards Anna because she is a much more sympathetic character than Emma Bovary. She is an aristocrat in the true sense of the word, not just born into a noble family, but possessing a nobility of spirit as well. Unlike Emma, she loves her child. Her husband, Karenin, is dry and humorlessly ascerbic, with the soul of a civil servant. He uses the child as a pawn to get back at Anna. Vronsky, in contrast, is dashing and clever and looks great in his uniform. In short,Anna is doomed as soon as she meets him. Fate (of the ancient Greek variety) wends its way through the novel, dragging her inexorably to her doom. There are so many vivid scenes throughout, but the most memorable to me is the scene in which Vronsky's racehorse breaks down, foreshadowing the conclusion at the train station. The subplot involving Levin and Kitty does not detract from the main plot, as it might in the hands of a lesser novelist. It is undeniably less dramatic, but serves as a counterpoint precisely because it is more prosaic. Levin is saved by love, Anna destroyed by it. I really don't believe in re-reading books. I'm usually disappointed when I return to them after a prolonged interval. For instance, I just can't bring myself to read War and Peace again. It would be like returning to an earlier affair. I'd be afraid my response wouldn't be as rich as it was at first encounter. But Anna is different. I've read it three times and haven't tired of it in the least. I really couldn't praise a work of art more highly.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Note on the edition, September 15, 2010

By 

Dis Hammerhand - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anna Karenina (Collectors Library) (Hardcover)

In 2004 CRW released an abridged version of Anna Karenina in the Collector's library -a collection of very small well-made hardbacks. Most of their offerings in the collection are unabridged but there was the occasional title which would seem to be too large for the small 4x6 format. At some point they decided to go ahead and publish longer works uncut and nice fat little volumes of some of Dickens' novels appeared. Later an entire Don Quixote appeared but with a smaller print than other books in the collection.

This year (2010), to my delight, they decided to re-release Anna Karenina unabridged in honor of the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy's death. It's a nice thick little volume. I am happy they decided to go with the standard sized print.

The translation is the Maude. If you're going to buy the Maude and not a newer translation, this is THE edition to get. It has a cloth cover, ribbon marker, gilded page edges and a sturdy sewn binding. It's a very well made book that is smaller than the cheapo paperbacks. I was contemplating buying an Everyman's Library edition until I learned they were coming out with it in this collection.

Small is definitely beautiful.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Vengeance is mine... and I will repay.", July 20, 2001

By 

dnk "dnkboston" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Anna Karenin (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Isn't it funny how the second part of that statement completely changes the meaning of the first? And that is the way the entire book reads. As soon as you think you have a handle on any of the characters, you learn something new that changes everything. The result is that it's almost impossible to make a judgment about anyone.

Anna, in particular, becomes more tragic just for that reason. First we see her as the dutiful, virtuous wife of a passionless man. Then we see her easily corrupted by the decadent Vronsky. How "good" was she in the first place if she was such a willing victim? And even though we see in painful detail why she continuously refuses to do the right thing until it's too late, we still find ourselves asking why.

Who is avenging themselves on whom, and why? Some of the answers are obvious, but some are unexpected and make the most righteous characters downright malicious, and the most unsympathetic almost pathetic.