Anna Karenina', which Tolstoy considered his first true novel, is widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction. Although Russian critics dismissed the novel on its publication as a 'trifling romance of high life', Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be 'flawless as a work of art'. His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired 'the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style', and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as 'the best ever written'. The novel is currently enjoyi