Anna Karenina

This is a sweeping, interwoven story of many characters, variously related, struggling to find meaning and happiness. It is a romance in the old sense - not of happy endings, but of hopeless passions, adventures, and morally weighted choices. It is also a very human quest for meaning, with realistic setbacks and insights, inspirations and vexations. The narration delightfully, and sometimes ominously, includes internal monologues of characters' distractions and petty self-interest as well as their courage, determination, and flaws. This is a nice translation, in that includes much of the "feel" of contemporary fiction (with its phrases of French and other languages scattered in), but stoops to explain some of the more obscure/untranslatable elements within the text. It can be confusing for non-Russians to follow the patronymic names. When a characters' father is Ivan, their middle names will be Ivanovich (m) or Ivanovna (f). Using the full first name plus patronymic (father-name) is a somewhat formal address, emphasizing their relationship to the parent or as brother and sister. When the author switches between the main language and French, occasionally German or Italian, or Latin, the degree of the readers education determines how well you can follow the petty secrets, gossip, or philosophical concepts being discussed. A person not educated in modern languages gets a realistic sense of what it would be like for you sitting at that dinner table, or perhaps serving in that house, being deliberately left out by the fancy people. However, the digital Kindle version has the convenience of being able to highlight and translate these phrases as you go. Modern English really doesn't have formal and informal address anymore, but other languages still use these forms routinely (Russian, French, Spanish, etc.). This translation goes ahead and explains in-text what the forms mean, as for example when a character chooses the degree of intimacy when speaking; readers of historic romances will know that a first-name basis implies intimacy not always socially prudent for unmarried young ladies and gentlemen. We English readers inevitably miss a lot of this variation in intimacy in the dialogue, but this translation does a bit of subtle coaching to help us recognize other indicators of acknowledged relationship. Nicknames and the intimate Russian "thou," patronymics and the French singular or plural, titles and honorifics and the formal Russian plural (the more distant "you") are mentioned in detail to give us clues to the drama of developing or receding intimacy. Reading Tolstoy in the original Russian may still be a challenge for non-native speakers, more so as the historic period and vocabulary recede from memory. This translated edition keeps the vividness of the characters, foreshadowing and atmospheric detail, natural and character-driven plot twists, while being a pleasure to read.

... of this immense mistakenly titled novel, is patently Lev Tolstoy masquerading as an artless thinker, that is, a Thinker without an Art, neither a painter nor a writer, simply a man trying to find find meaning in life by thinking about himself. Does he think too much? Eventually he thinks so. He's happiest when he wields his own scythe, an aristocrat embarrassing his serfs both by his energy and by his inappropriate humility. More pages of the novel are devoted to Levin's erratic musings and violent mood swings than to any other character, male or female. Levin is the protagonist as well as his own antagonist. Levin is the intellectual leavening of this tear-sodden melodrama. It's Levin's epiphany, his realization of a plausible happiness amid the falsehood and grief of life, that concludes the book, long pages after the death of the title-character. Levin's abjuration of Reason and embrace of instinctive mysticism do not amount to an Answer to Life's Big Questions for this reader, but Levin is a fully realized human being, one of the most believable in all literature, just as this novel is one of the most perfectly realized works of fiction ever written. "Anna Karenina" is an earnest philosophical novel upon which a fiery opera is grafted. The graft is surgically perfect. It takes. The stories of Anna and Vronsky, Levin and Kitty, Levin and his Doubts are all melded together seamlessly. There have been at least half a dozen grand operas based on "Anna Karenina", none of which have held the stage either artistically or commercially, not merely because the novel is too large for a libretto but because the deepest parts are invariably excluded. No Levin interior monologues, no leavening of the plot! Grand opera, in the tradition of 19th C Romanticism, isn't amenable to Tolstoy's quasi-Jungian Weltanschauung. It seems that Leos Janacek attempted to compose an "Anna Karenina" opera, but abandoned the project. And if Janacek couldn't do it, no one else had a chance! I'm not a scholar of Russian literature. I haven't read the preface to this translation, or any biography of Tolstoy, or a single essay about "Anna Karenina", but I'm convinced that Levin is Tolstoy's spiritual self-portrait, and his prefiguration of the course his own life would take. I also have to confess, sadly, that I can't read a word of Russian. This great novel exists for me only via translation. Whether the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation captures any or none of Tolstoy's literary flair is completely opaque to me. I had read the 100-year-old translation that remains the most widely known, and assumed that the novel had to be better in the orginal, since the translation amounted to wretched English prose. Now I can at least confidently declare that Pevear's translation is good English prose. In fact, if I were given a paragraph of it without a title and with all the place names replaced by sites in North Dakota, I think I would be fooled. I wouldn't suspect a translation. "Anna Karenina" is a sublime creation, unquestionably a "world classic." Don't be afraid of its length, or of its depth.

Esta edición es preciosa, la calidad del papel en que está impreso es superior. Los acabados de las páginas como si estuvieran cortadas a mano dan un plus, pero es comprensible que no se el estilo de todos, da un abadado mas bien rústico.

الكتاب وصلني بصفحات غير متساوية ومتشققة وبعضها متلاصق

Absolute classic. Now I know why Tolstoy is considered such a great writer. Worth keeping it.

This book has the worst quality! the edge of papers are rough and made the book look very cheap, however I cared about the content more than the shape, but i do not recommend to buy it from this seller since they do not have any quality control over their products.

The book looks like it was read by 30 people before. Indefinitely goes back. Unacceptable