The genius of this novel really lays in how we are introduced to the characters. It’s very easy to condemn nearly everyone in the story, Anna and Alexei especially – but that’s only because we don’t know then at the beginning.

How easy it is to judge someone we don’t know, whose shoes we haven’t walked in. How important it is we see Levin cut the grass with the peasants to show us how to see the rest of the cast.