Download Anna Karenina 1899 by Leo Tolstoy Free PDF eBook













Book Published: 1899

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Translator: NATHAN HASKELL DOLE







Tolstoy's Anna Karenin includes great insights into a wide range of human emotions and weaknesses - many of which are just as prevalent today as when the novel was first published in 1878.They include infidelity, paranoia, drug and alcohol abuse, obsessional desire, the pressures of family life, hypocrisy, religious bigotry, insensitivity, selfishness, and self-righteousness - all manifested in a lengthy list of highly memorable characters.Several plots run through the novel, but it is remarkably easy to read. The tempestuous illicit love affair between Anna and Count Vronsky makes sad reading. It eventually consumes them both - with a tragic outcome and much suffering on the way, including Anna's ostracism and social isolation - the outcome of a rigid moral code imposed in Russia and many other countries in the 19th century. Seventeen years after Ann Karenin was published that same code destroyed Oscar Wilde in England.Tolstoy makes no such judgments and his observations on human behavior and irrationalities are both sensitive and perceptive. For example, Vronsky's mother maintains that her son has been led astray by the wicked Anna - his lust and passion had nothing to do with it, of course!If the book first appeared today, it would no doubt be pilloried for racism. When two characters - Katavasov and Kosnyshev - are blackened by dust through an outdoor journey during the Russian summer, the former observes 'But I am not a negro! Awash and I shall look like a human being!'Just as well Anna Karenin was completed in 1878. Otherwise, the world's greatest novel might never have seen the light of day!Anna Karenin is a novel to read and reread, Masterpiece is an understatement.