Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina opens with one of the most famous sentences in world literature — "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" — and proceeds to develop a double narrative of extraordinary psychological and moral complexity. Leo Tolstoy interweaves the tragic story of Anna's adulterous passion and social ruin with the spiritual quest of Levin, creating a novel that William Faulkner called "the best novel yet written."

Written during the period of Russia's Great Reforms and published in 1877, Anna Karenina explores the tensions between personal desire and social convention, faith and reason, rural authenticity and urban corruption with a depth and subtlety that have never been surpassed. The novel has been adapted for film with iconic performances by Greta Garbo in 1935 and Keira Knightley in 2012, and it has inspired operatic treatments as well.