I will admit that before I read it, I had no idea that Anna Karenina was more than a story of tragic, scandalous romance. I went in expecting glamorous Moscow ballrooms; tearful shouting matches between lovers; elegant dresses worn with luxurious furs. Anna Karenina does contain all those things. Yet its most surprising turn — aside, of course, from its granular questions about how best to run an 18th-century Russian farm — is perhaps its final and surprisingly sacramental revelation that what makes for a good life is often hidden within the most everyday things around us.

Anna Karenina’s narrative is split between two protagonists: glamorous society woman Anna and idealistic farmer Konstantin Levin. If A Tale of Two Cities is just that, then Anna Karenina, with its famous opening line (“Happy families are all alike; unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way”) is a tale of two families: the ones made, or unmade, by Anna and Levin respectively. The novel compares their attempts to find happiness by way of their mutual pursuit of romantic passion and familial joy.

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