Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1877
Nabokov called it "flawless." A novel of such moral complexity and psychological realism that every major character feels inevitable and tragic. Tolstoy builds a whole world, then shows it grinding people down. The 2007 TIME poll of 125 authors placed it at number one.
The case against
Half this novel is Levin: mowing with the peasants, agricultural reform, Russian land politics, and a closing religious conversion Tolstoy mistakes for a climax. Readers have skimmed those chapters for a century and a half, waiting to get back to Anna. After her death the book keeps going anyway, and the moralist in Tolstoy elbows the novelist aside.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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