Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina is often referred to as a pinnacle of realist fiction and flawless work of art embedding Tolstoy's true stylistic magic. Leo Tolstoy himself considered Anna Karenina his first true novel which follows life of a married socialite and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The novel explores a diverse range of topics from politics to family, religion, morality, gender, social class and romance. The novel consists of eight volumes....

A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...