Anna Karenina (Classic Maior) (Spanish Edition)

Flaubert exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" upon reading it. "I do not hesitate to affirm that it is the greatest social novel of all time," said Thomas Mann. Dostoevsky, a contemporary of Tolstoy, described it as a "perfect work of art." The mere mention of the name Anna Karenina immediately suggests two major themes of nineteenth-century novels: passion and adultery. However, as Nabokov stated, "it is one of the greatest love stories in world literature," simply recalling its famous opening line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Karenina, which Tolstoy began writing in 1873 and did not see published as a book until 1878, is an exhaustive exploration of the family institution and, perhaps above all, as Víctor Gallego (the author of this new translation) states, "a fable about the pursuit of happiness." The idea that happiness does not consist of fulfilling desires underlies the detailed description of a splendid gallery of characters who experience uncertainty and disappointment, exhilaration and boredom, the greatest pleasures and the saddest miseries.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana. In 1852, he published "Childhood," followed by "Adolescence" (1854) and "Youth" (1857). He depicted his memories of the Crimean War in "Sevastopol Sketches" (1855-1856). The success of his monumental novel "War and Peace" (1865-1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1873-1878), two landmarks of world literature, did not alleviate a profound spiritual crisis, which he recounted in "A Confession" (1878-1882). An extensive collection of his short stories has been published in the same collection (ALBA CLÁSICA MAIOR, núm. XXXIII). He died in 1910, on his way to a monastery at the Astapovo train station.

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