Anna Karenina

Plot

In this great novel Tolstoy examines three marriages set against a broad background which encompasses both fashionable town life and rural Russia, extremes of wealth and destitution. At the centre of the book are Anna and Karenin, whose sterile marriage drives Anna into an affair with Vronsky that is so intense and so much against the conventions of Russian society that it cannot survive; the marriage of Oblonsky, basically selfish but so very lovable, to Dolly, is unhappy but resigned; and that of Kitty and Levin, though sometimes troubled, is fruitful and satisfying, and in part mirrors Tolstoy's own relationships with his wife.