Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1877) a pinnacle of realist fiction. Taking place in nineteenth-century Russian aristocratic society, it is the story of the sensuous and rebellious Anna Karenina and her love affair with the dashing Count Vronsky. Tolstoy criticizes and condemns the social values that demanded hypocrisy and falseness and that created individuals with inner conflicts and weaknesses.