Anna Karenina

By: Leo Tolstoy

Narrated by: David Horovitch

Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude.

©1994 BBC Audiobooks Ltd (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Horovitch makes Tolstoy Come Alive

What about David Horovitch’s performance did you like?

Mr. Horovitch was simply fantastic in his portrayal of this great story. He does a fantastic job of giving each character their own unique voice, and is unafraid of investing his now emotion into the story. Bravo!!

Very enjoyable, I didn't want it to end

David Horovitch does a wonderful job bringing this book to life. I really enjoyed listening to him.

It ain't no War and Peace

Any additional comments?

Having just finished War and Peace, I am probably in the worst possible position to review Anna Karenina with any degree of perspective. I thought War and Peace was one of the best books I had ever read, so going from that to this was bound to be fraught with--shall we say--a complexity of opinion.This book is great. It really is. But to review it under these circumstances would be of little use to anyone, because that which preceded it--at the risk of starting World War III--was so much better. So instead of talking about Konstantin Levin, let me talk about David Horovitch, the narrator, and his performance. This guy knows how to use his voice. It's really quite stunning to experience; he imbues every phrase with exactly the passion and nuance you would expect from the characters themselves. It's as if the characters were hovering over his shoulder, telling him "no...say it like THIS." He is truly a voice "actor" and a consummate performance artist in every sense. If Tolstoy were alive today, he would insist on buying David Horovitch a lavish dinner. Having said that--and this is not a complaint, really--what Horovitch doesn't do is don different voices for each character, as some voice actors do. He switches from accent to accent (and language to language) with great fluidity, but he rarely alters his voice to accommodate the gender of his characters. I don't view this as a shortcoming, necessarily, because unless it's done to perfection it can be extremely off-putting to hear a deep gravelly man-voice trying to sound like a coquettish maiden or a nine-year-old boy. But in this case, because there are so many characters and so much rapid dialogue, there is occasionally some confusion because of this. Be that as it may: If you've read Tolstoy, and also if you haven't, I strongly recommend this audio version of Anna Karenina. It is profoundly great. My only caveat is that, if you're on a no-holds-barred, damn-the-torpedoes Tolstoy binge, you should probably read it before you read War and Peace, and not after.

A Timeless Read

I chose this book, because I’d never been required to read it in school; I was curious about it as a classic.

Wonderfully woven story; ordinary and not ordinary lives living the realities of life’s mundanities; and capturing the characters thoughts, ponderings, insecurities and existential crises of an everyday people.

The narrator was wonderful and captured each character excellently. Easy to listen to his voice.

Relationship stories that withstand the passage of time; regardless of century in which the story was crafted; because we are, afterall, human beings trying to be.

good besides the whispering

lovely story. The narrator spoke with a nice cadence however sometimes he would whisper lines which were inaudible to me.