Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina, a married aristocrat and socialite from St. Petersburg falls in love with Count Vronsky, a civilized military officer. Constrained by the laws of the Russian orthodox church, Anna is skeptical and anxious about leaving her husband and starting a new life with Vronsky. A social outcast, Anna is a voracious reader and despises fakery that she feels her husband embodies. Unfortunately, with her growing suspicion of Vronsky's fidelity, her affair brings her more misery than happiness. Eventually, her fear leads her to taking her own life. Anna Karenina is considered as a masterpiece in realist fiction.

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in Russia's Tula Province, Yasnaya Polyana, into an aristocratic family. He primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina"are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and an apex of realist fiction. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. He is still regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. His ideas on non-violent resistance, conveyed in such works as "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" , were to have a profound influence on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King.