Levin visits Kitty and proposes to her, but Kitty is smitten with Vronsky and refuses Levin. Oblonsky warns Levin of a rival suitor, a dashing young military officer named Vronsky. Levin goes to the skating rink where Oblonsky had arranged for him to meet up with Kitty sure enough, she is there, and he can show off his physical prowess. Even though Nikolai says he wants to be left alone, Levin resolves to go and see him. While Levin is in Moscow, he stays with his half-brother, Koznyshev, an intellectual the two men discuss Nikolai, their ill older brother. Levin says that he is in love with Oblonsky’s sister-in-law, Kitty, and Oblonsky sets up a plan for them to meet. Oblonsky has gotten his position through his brother-in-law, Karenin. Levin, a landowner who lives in the country and is an old friend of Oblonsky’s, comes to visit Oblonsky in his office in Moscow. The servants know that they should side with Dolly, but they can’t help being lenient with Oblonsky. Oblonsky tries very hard to feel guilty, but he’s too merry and affable, and too prone to enjoy life, to feel too remorseful. She is devastated and refuses to leave her rooms. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.The Oblonsky house is in turmoil: Stiva Oblonsky, a genial aristocrat, has had an affair with the children’s former governess, and his wife, Dolly, is furious. Rosamund Bartlett's translation conveys Tolstoy's precision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station.

One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s.

The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story.

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