Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction. Anna Karenina tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner, who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives.

Leo Tolstoy (9th september 1829-20th November 1910), the author, was a Russian writer and regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He also wrote short storys, plays, essays. His renowned works are 'War and Peace', 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' and so on. His fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas (Family Happiness, After the Ball, Hadji Murad). This novel is divided into eight parts and major characters are more than a dozen. This novel is based on the themes of betrayal, faith, marriage, family, desire, rural life, urban life etc. The book is very interesting and focuses on an extramarital affair between Anna and Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky. The story takes place against the backdrop of the liberal reforms which were initiated by the emperor of Russia. In the start, the character named, Prince Stepan has been unfaithful to his wife, Princess Darya (Dolly). Dolly has come to know about her husband's affair with family governess. His sister Anna comes in a bid to calm the situation. But she herself engages with Alexei Vronsky. The author has very successfully narrated this family drama type situation, seems related to the societal systems, which is alarming. Also it concludes that humans makes mistakes.

Ranging in scope from lengthy novellas to fables and folktales only a few pages long, Leo Tolstoy’s short fiction provides a marvelous opportunity to become closely acquainted with Russia’s great novelist. Volume 2 of the Collected Shorter Fiction reveals how Tolstoy’s growing spiritual preoccupations flowered into a series of extraordinary late masterpieces that equal anything in the earlier novels for intensity and power. Readers of The Death of Iván Ilých, The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius, Master and Man, and Hadji Murád will recognize the brilliant novelist now transfigured by his passionate quest for salvation and forgiveness. Aylmer and Louise Maude’s classic translations are supplemented by new translations by Nigel J. Cooper of six stories, including two that have never before appeared in English.

This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING!

The doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.