Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina may be the greatest single novel ever written; it may also be just plainly and sublimely good. Regardless, there is no doubt that Anna Karenina (generally considered Tolstoy's finest novel) is a sublime achievement. Anna, miserable in a loveless marriage, succumbs to the desire for the dashing Vronsky. That sort of thing didn't stand one in good stead in 19th-century Russia; bad goes to worse, and the end Anna comes to is the stuff of legend. Tolstoy seamlessly captures a weaves a tapestry of Russian society -- as Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on Tolstoy, We are not to take Anna Karenina as a work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life. One of the greatest love stories in world literature. -- Vladimir Nabokov