Anna Karenina Author:Tolstoy, Leo Anna Karenina is the haunting drama of a woman bound by the shackles of the social system under which she lives. Beautiful, noble and sensitive, Anna Karenina is nonetheless driven through the combination of a loveless marriage and a passionate nature to become the mistress of ardent and talented Count Vronsky. For fear of a scandal that would... more » endanger his social and political position, Anna's husband refuses to divorce her, even when he learns that she is to bear Vronsky's child. The condemnation of society, added to Anna's hopeless longing for her first-born son, brings about the inevitable disintegration of the lover affair and Anna's final act of deperation and defiance.
A vividly realistic picture of 19th century St. Petersburg life, Anna Karenina also reveals with remarkable accuracy and poignancy the inner conflicts and anguish of its heroine. It is a novel which rightfully takes its place among the world's great literature.« less