Author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, summit of the art of the novel
The summit of Russian literature and of the art of the novel itself. War and Peace, against the backdrop of Napoleon’s invasion, writes the fates of hundreds of characters through war and peace on a scale no one had reached before; Anna Karenina, through one woman’s adultery and ruin, writes to the full the moral weight of love, family, and society. Late in life he passed through a profound spiritual crisis, gave up aristocratic life, and sought a plain faith centered on love and nonviolence — which deeply influenced Gandhi.
Anna Karenina opens: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." With one sentence Tolstoy sets the key for a whole novel of marriage and betrayal. He can place the grandest history beside the most private family, so that amid armies and multitudes the reader still sees one woman’s heart break.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.