"Anna Karenina" in Our Time

"The author meticulously steps through the narrative of Anna Karenina, focusing on the characters of Anna, Dolly, and Levin and situates the novel not only within a larger literary context but also in ethical, historical, literary, philosophical, scientific, and theological contexts. That he achieves an impressive intertextuality without alienating his declared audience—'the educated layperson'—is noteworthy. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice

"In clear, lucid prose, [Morson] guides the readers through the novel, pointing out passages or characters they might have overlooked or misread, highlighting the intricacies of Tolstoy's narration, and, as a whole, living up to the promise of his title. . . . A significant and vital new piece of Tolstoy criticism. . . . Morson has managed to produce the seemingly impossible: a work that is highly accessible and appealing to the lay reader, while at the same time contributing significantly to scholarly discourse."—Sara Kate Heukerott

"Morson has managed to produce the seemingly impossible: a work that is highly accessible and appealing to the lay reader, while at the same time contributing significantly to scholarly discourse."—Sara Kate Heukerott


"'Anna Karenina' in Our Time joins a select number of must-read books devoted to Anna Karenina in English and Russian."—Donna Orwin, Slavic and East European Journal

"Gary Saul Morson has written a rich, rewarding, and original book. As you read it, you feel the force of an author who has studied and taught Lev Tolstoi's work for decades, who has elaborated and revised his views countless times, and who now speaks with the seasoned voice of a philosopher–about one of the most philosophical novelists the world has produced. This work is a real pleasure to read."—Steven Cassedy, Slavic Review

Selected as a Favorite Book of 2007 by Books & Culture (Mr. Wilson's Bookshelf)


“Morson is a splendid reader of texts, and his readings in Anna Karenina not only strengthen his arguments but reveal subtleties that have been ‘hidden in plain sight’ for well over a century.”—Robert Belknap, Columbia University

"Gary Saul Morson, long one of our best guides to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, makes a vigorous and bracing argument in this book for why fiction urgently matters in our moral lives."—Robert Alter, author of Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the Language of the Novel

“Highly readable and passionately argued, Morson’s book makes a bold, important argument and makes it with eloquence and lucid reasoning.”—Robin Miller, Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities and Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Brandeis University


“This remarkable book amounts to a thoroughgoing challenge to the entire tenor and purport of Anglophone academic criticism from the 1970s until now.”—Frederick Crews, Professor Emeritus of English, University of California at Berkeley


"In a series of ground-breaking works that together constitute one of the most important critical projects today, Gary Saul Morson has fashioned that rarest of things: an unmistakable voice and original theoretical horizon. Now, in Anna Karenina in Our Time, he brings together many of his central concerns in an altogether singular and demanding reading of Tolstoy’s great novel. Whether one shares all of Morson’s conclusions or not is irrelevant: what matters is the richness of the debate they open for us. We will never read Anna Karenina the same way again."—Michael André Bernstein, University of California, Berkeley