This is the full work of Anna Karenina in ebook form. Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. It is the tragic story of a married aristocrat/socialite and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story starts when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brothers unbridled womanizing—something that prefigures her own later situation though she would experience less tolerance by others. A bachelor Vronsky is eager to marry her if she would agree to leave her husband Karenin a senior government official but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms her own insecurities and Karenins indecision. Although Vronsky and Anna go to Italy where they can be together they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia she is shunned becoming further isolated and anxious while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronskys reassurances she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity fearing loss of control. A parallel story within the novel is that of Konstantin Levin a country landowner who wants to marry Kitty sister to Dolly and sister-in-law to Annas brother Oblonsky. Konstantin has to propose twice before Kitty accepts. The novel details Konstantins difficulties managing his estate his eventual marriage and his personal issues until the birth of his first child. Anna Karenina explores a diverse range of topics throughout its approximately thousand pages. Some of these topics include an evaluation of the feudal system that existed in Russia at the time—politics not only in the Russian government but also at the level of the individual characters and families religion morality gender and social class. Fyodor Dostoyevsky declared it flawless as a work of art. His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov who especially admired the flawless magic of Tolstoys style and by William Faulkner who described the novel as the best ever written. The novel continues to enjoy popularity as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane published in 2007 in The Top Ten in Time which declared that Anna Karenina is the greatest novel ever written. - Extracted from Wikipedia
