Approaches to Teaching Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

Book excerpt: Anna Karenina is probably the most often taught nineteenth-century Russian novel in the American academy. Teachers have found that including this virtuoso work of art on a syllabus reaps many rewards and stirs up heated classroom discussion -- on sex and sexuality, dysfunction in the family, gender roles, society's hypocrisy and cruelty. But translation and transliteration problems, the peculiarity of Russian names and terms, and the unfamiliarity of Russian geography and history present a range of pedagogical challenges.