Is Leo Tolstoi's "Anna Karenina" The Best Novel Of All Times?

It is certainly the most famous work of the 19th century. The story is set mostly in St. Petersburg's high society This wonderful city is also the first station of her travels. What Tolstoi does in this novel is - he describes society and the institution of marriage in an incomparable way. He shows us that Anna's drive to leave her husband for her great love is punished by her suffering from being a social drop-out, tells us movingly how much a human being depends on the feeling to "belong" and that this sense of "adhesion" is one of the main "glues" of society and - cut down to the individual- marriage is indeed the essential instrument of our society.
Petersburg was- until 1917- Russia's capital and Zar Peter's "window to the West". Anna took the train to Moscow, where she met Wronsky for the first time on the station. And it's the very place, where she ends her thoughtful and very short life.

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