Anna Karenina

By Leo Tolstoy

1878

Realist novel

Tolstoy's sprawling 800-page novel of love, marriage and Russian society in the 1870s. The famous opening line — "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" — sets up parallel arcs across two unhappy marriages — Anna's tragic affair with Count Vronsky, and Levin's earnest stumbling courtship of Kitty Shcherbatsky. A book that ranges from ballrooms and steeplechases to peasant farming and the metaphysics of faith.