Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina travels to Moscow to help reconcile her brother Stiva with his wife Dolly and meets the cavalry officer Alexei Vronsky. Their affair ends Anna's marriage to the senior official Alexei Karenin and gradually isolates her from the aristocratic society that continues to tolerate similar conduct by men.

A parallel narrative follows the landowner Konstantin Levin, his courtship of Kitty Shcherbatskaya and his attempts to manage an estate after the emancipation of the serfs. The two stories examine marriage, parenthood, rural reform, faith and the unequal social consequences of desire, before Vronsky leaves Russia with volunteers travelling to fight for Serbia.