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Summary: All of life...in one book...the best novel ever written
Review: I picked up this novel while travelling in India, and read for two days straight, the last few hours of which I was standing in a very crowded unreserved train. But it was so unbelievably good that I simply could NOT put it down. The last few hundred pages were a spiritual experience, something I would not say about any other book I've ever read. I had the feeling that I had been transformed in some mysterious way, that life was suddenly far more vast and deep than I'd thought before turning the first page. I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone, but especially to those who have a hunger for life and the pursuit of experiencing its deepest, most spiritual aspects.
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Summary: Move over, Mrs. Garnett.
Review: Yes, this is the translation to read -- every sentence has been carefully thought through: a translation you could only get from a native-born Russian (Larissa Volokhonskaya) and an English-speaking person (an American, Richard Pevear, her husband) working together, with a native ear for BOTH languages. The prose just flows -- to the point I was hardly are conscious of reading a translation (the highest compliment). My wife (Russian) likes this English-language version so much she has read part of it, first out of curiousity just to see how good a translation can be, then for the pleasure of the English prose. She says Tolstoy in the original is better and since I can read some Russian, I agree. There are some words, expressions that are, after all, untranslatable -- maybe you can find a literally equivalent word, but not an emotionally equivalent one. So study your Russian (I intend to) and maybe someday read the orignial. Meanwhile, there's this. A great classic and a tour de force translation that just rings true on every page.
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Summary: "what can you name that's superior?"
Review: For the longest time I have been reticent to write a review of Anna for fear of not being able to do the book justice. I still have that fear, but the time has come to at least say that this is my favorite novel of all time. I refer to the Magarshack translation which I have read and now re-read. I can't imagine a more intriguing story... admittedly however, it would help if the reader had an interest in the world that Tolstoy inhabited. There are so many (often lengthy) asides into his thoughts on abstention from worldly riches / social reconstruction etc. Tolstoy gets his character Levin to do reams of his own preaching on these subjects but again, because I find Tolstoy himself to be one of the most interesting characters Russia has ever produced, I don't mind finding him so obviously entrenched in his own story here.But "Anna" is first and foremost a LOVE story which depicts the fleeting and disastrous effects of tempestous/undisciplined love (Anna and Vronsky) over against the lasting and mutually beneficial results of patient/disciplined love (Levin and Kitty). This book is an important masterpiece without rival in literature. Reading such a book on one's death-bed would not be a waste of time. When I think of Anna, I am reminded of something that Solzhenitsyn made one of his fictional characters say in his book The First Circle: "In the 17th century there was Rembrandt, and there is Rembrandt today. Just try to improve on him. And yet the technology of the 17th century now seems primitive to us. Or take the technological innovations of the 1870's. For us they're child's play. But that was when Anna Karenina was written. What can you name that's superior?" Read Anna... and you will be as silent as I am on that one!
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Summary: The wonderful tale of two Russian families.
Review: The opening line of Anna Karenina lays the groundwork for this often depressing, yet ultimately inspiring story: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Tolstoy's classic that follows tells the tale of several years in the lives of two families who's paths have intertwined. One family centers around Anna, a self-centered, troubled adulteress, while in contrast to her stands Levin, a strong, inquisitive, honest man who seeks to enrich his familial relations. The plot meanders up to the climax, but the character development throughout is what makes this novel a classic. The insight Tolstoy had on human nature almost seems divine, and he used this to produce figures in this novel that the reader will often hate at the same time that he/she will sympathize with them.
This book may be dreary for all but the most devoted readers, but those who stick with it will be rewarded in the book's finale. Levin's spiritual reve!lation at the end of his struggles left me highlighting the many brilliant parts of the final few chapters. This is one of the best books I've ever read. Buy it and enjoy it.
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Summary: are you kidding? I'll bet the previous reviewer and I are a
Review: lot alike. This is my first time reading Anna Karenina. I've been dyin' to read this book. In the past I've quite enjoyed Pevear and Volokhonsky, because I don't know who wrote what, and both of them are smashing authors. We get two perspectives on Anna and Vronsky, dipping and coiling, luring home answers this side of miraculous. If there's such a character as 'God', then gimme his favorite book. Anna Karenina, the English version surpassing all others. --I'm sure the previous reviewer thought Leonard Kent got the same voice--and shut up entirely--Tolstoy rules! Yeah, we're all pretty glorious re-interpreting someone's voice when explaining God's final, glorious masterpiece. . . . in my opinion anyway . . .
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Summary: Two stories for the price of one!
Review: There are two stories in this novel, which are connected at the beginning but become pretty much completely separate in the end. There's the title story of Anna, who runs off with a good-looking army officer leaving behind her stolid politician husband and young son. Then there's the highly autobiographical story of the quiet, unconfident Levin, who's quite happy to live a peaceful life in the countryside (and gets regarded as a fool as a result), except when he ventures into society (quote unquote) to try and woo the woman he loves, who sadly has eyes only for the man Anna fixes her attention on. I have to confess that I found Levin's story a lot more interesting than Anna's. I sympathised a lot with his lack of confidence and search for purpose in life, and ended up rushing the bits about Anna to read about him. However, both are well-excecuted, Tolstoy's piercing insights into human nature creeping in. Levin's behaviour in particular was eminently understandable and recognisable. I have a hard time deciding whether I enjoyed War and Peace or this more - certainly the character of Levin surpasses the ones in War and Peace. Read them both, that's my advice.
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Summary: This is the translation to read!!
Review: I won't repeat all the praise people have given this book in other reviews , aside from agreeing that it is an incredible, complex, rich work of art, but my advice would be to read the new Modern Library edition. This is an excellent, excellent translation complete with explanatory footnotes (where approprite -- by no means do they distract from the reading), and final commentaries by Tolstoy, Dostoevksy, Mann, Nabakov, and others. There are also 8 questions at the end for a "Reading Group Guide." This translation is absolutely incomparable -- attempt to read no other!! -
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Summary: Tabloid Romance nothing more
Review: We must ask the question is this a novel of greatness or is it just a long Mills and Boon piece of flummery. The answer is in the book is a tabloid love story. Leo was the ugly kid at school, the kid who got left out of games. When he got older the girls would laugh at him, he would be the last one standing at a dance. Girls would make up excuses to leave him of their dance cards. His revenge for the terror of his childhood? This book is he revenge for his childhood. What is the plot, the plot is about an amiable dodo (read Tolstoy) who flounces around and is unlucky in love. What happens in the end he finds true love. Even his crack pot theories on farming are realized. What happens to the woman who is the title figure? Beautiful people can't survive in books written by nerds. Beautiful Anna has to have a disastrous life and be betrayed by her handsome lover. (Handsome men can't do the right thing in a novel written by the ugly) She then has to kill herself in a climatic end her punishment for being beautiful and for every rejection that Tolstoy ever had as a young man. Read it by all means but literature no. You know in your heart I'm right.
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Summary: Sublime reading
Review: Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina is a masterpiece. If I were stranded on a desert isle, this is one of the books I would want with me. The story is essentially about a woman who leaves her husband for another man, only to come to a tragic end. Yet the main character is not really Anna, but Kostya Levin, almost the antithesis of Anna. And it is this polarization of characters that is one of the sublime features of this novel. The characters themselves are especially an element that engrossed me. While there are a dizzying number of personalities, each lives "outside" of the story as well as within it - that is to say, even the most minor of characters seems to have a life of their own, only dropping in the story to play a small part before going on about their business. Each character has depth - they are much more than characitures of "good" and "evi", showing their humanity in their follies and in their decisions - for both good and evil. Tolstoy has an alternative motive in Anna Karenina, though. The story has a barely perceptable religious tone to it, Tolstoy makes a moral statement about how life should be lived, and what a person's role in life should be in order to be "truly happy". This is the result of an epiphany that Tolstoy experienced while writing the novel - an event that changed his life and eventually estranged him from many of his children. The only problem I foresee readers having is keeping characters straight (as this translation uses names as well as patronymics - meaning "the son / daughter of" as in Stepan Arkadyvitch: Stepan, son of Arkady). Individuals are referred to by name, patronymic or sometimes nickname (Kostya for Konstantin for example.) My recommendation is to write the characters down in order to keep track of them. With this said, I highly recommend this book - the language is beautiful, the plot is riviting, the story line although a bit moralistic is superb, and the characters are vivid and real.
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Summary: Read the Modern Library translation!
Review: I won't repeat all the praise people have given this book, aside from agreeing that it is an incredible, complex, rich work of art. My advice would be to read the paperback Modern Library Classics translation, introduction by Mona Simpson, translated by Constance Garnett, translation revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova. This is an excellent, excellent translation complete with explanatory footnotes (where approprite -- by no means do they distract from the reading), and final commentaries by Tolstoy, Dostoevksy, Mann, Nabakov, and others. There are also 8 questions at the end for a "Reading Group Guide." This translation is absolutely incomparable -- attempt to read no other!!
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