Anna Karenina Book Quiz
Eight multiple-choice questions on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878) — plot, characters and the moments everyone quotes. Two minutes, instant score, every answer explained below. For the full mixed-classics version, take the original book quiz — 15 questions across the whole canon.
All 8 questions and answers
Prefer to read the quiz instead of taking it? Expand for every question, answer and a one-line explanation.
- What is the novel's opening line? — Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.. The sentence that announces the book's subject: marriage.
- Who is Anna's husband? — Alexei Karenin, a senior government official. Cold, correct Karenin — twenty years her senior.
- Who is Anna's lover? — Count Alexei Vronsky, a cavalry officer. The shared first name Alexei is Tolstoy's quiet joke.
- Who is the novel's second hero, often read as Tolstoy himself? — Konstantin Levin. Levin's proposals, mowing and faith track Tolstoy's own life and questions.
- Whom does Levin marry? — Kitty Shcherbatskaya. After refusal, patience and a second proposal — Kitty, who was first promised a dance by Vronsky.
- How does Anna die? — She throws herself under a train. At the railway station where she first met Vronsky.
- Who is Seryozha? — Anna's son with Karenin. The child she is forbidden to see — the wound that never closes.
- What resolves Levin's storyline at the end? — A simple faith: living for the soul and goodness. The final pages: goodness must be practiced, not deduced.
About Anna Karenina
Tolstoy's 1878 novel of two marriages in parallel: Anna's ruinous love for the officer Vronsky, and Levin's patient courtship of Kitty in the countryside. It opens with one of the most famous first sentences in fiction. The novel runs about 350,000 words (roughly 864 pages in a standard paperback) — about 24 hours and 31 minutes of reading at an average pace. Before you commit, see the full breakdown in how long it takes to read Anna Karenina or calculate reading time for any other book.
Hard — long, two interleaved plots, many characters named similarly. If you get 6 or more of the eight questions right, the book clearly stuck.
What this quiz covers
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina sits in our russian classics shelf, and the eight questions follow the book the way a reader experiences it: how the story opens, the turn in the middle, the characters who carry it, and the ending people still argue about. You will not be asked for page numbers or publication trivia — but three or four questions are built to separate people who read the book from people who read a summary. If a question stumps you, that gap is your reading list talking.
Fair warning for the ambitious: readers who clear this quiz often move straight to the reading-time breakdown for Anna Karenina to plan the reread, then test the rest of their shelf against the mixed classic literature quiz.
More book quizzes
War and Peace quiz, Crime and Punishment quiz, 1984 quiz, Animal Farm quiz, Brave New World quiz — or browse every book quiz on the site. For scale, Anna Karenina is the 4th longest of the 133 classics timed here — shorter than The Count of Monte Cristo but longer than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Doing the whole author? Our Leo Tolstoy books in order guide lists every book with the best entry point.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions are in the Anna Karenina quiz?
Eight multiple-choice questions covering Leo Tolstoy's plot, characters and most famous moments. The quiz takes about two minutes and your score is instant.
Is the Anna Karenina book quiz free?
Yes — no signup, no email, nothing to install. Answer the eight questions and get your score immediately.
What score should I aim for?
8/8 means you know the book cold; 6+ is a solid score. Below 4, the book is calling you back for a reread.
Is the Anna Karenina quiz hard?
Hard — long, two interleaved plots, many characters named similarly. The questions themselves stick to famous, load-bearing moments — the scenes and lines the book is remembered for — so a genuine read usually scores 6+.
How long is the Anna Karenina reading itself?
About 350,000 words — roughly 864 pages, or about 24 hours and 31 minutes at an average pace. The full pace breakdown is in how long it takes to read Anna Karenina. It runs 239 chapters, averaging 1,464 words each; see the book-count guide for its full structure.