Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel, when he came to consider War and Peace to be more than a novel. Soon after meeting her at dinner, Tolstoy began reading Pushkin's prose and once had a fleeting daydream of 'a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow', which proved to be the first indication of Anna's character. Fyodor Dostoevsky declared it to be 'flawless as a work of art