Introduction

'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' So opens this novel with its world-famous sentence. The beautiful and sincere Anna is married to Karenin, a cold, rigid official twenty years her senior, and has a beloved son. At a Moscow railway station she meets the young and handsome officer Vronsky, and the two fall irresistibly in love. Unwilling to live a lie, she openly leaves her husband, but loses her son, is shunned by high society, and finds even Vronsky's love a growing source of unease. At last, in jealousy, loneliness and despair, she throws herself under a train. Running parallel is the story of the landowner Levin, who manages his estate, mows hay alongside his peasants, marries the young Kitty, and seeks the meaning of life in family and in faith in God; Levin carries much of Tolstoy himself. The work is translated in several volumes.