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50 free Anna Karenina trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Anna Karenina trivia for anyone who has read all eight parts or just knows how it ends. The quiz opens with the book itself: who wrote it, when and where it was serialised, the first sentence about happy families, the epigraph from Romans, and Tolstoy's own bleak feelings as he finished. Then the cast: Stiva and the governess, Dolly and Kitty, Levin's two proposals, Vronsky's cavalry commission, Karenin twenty years Anna's senior, Betsy Tverskaya, Koznyshev and Agafya Mikhailovna. The plot questions follow the story from the railway worker's death to the freight train at Obiralovka: the ball, Frou-Frou's broken back, the German spa, Karenin's threat over Seryozha, Russian divorce law, Vronsky's suicide attempt and pretentious painting, the ninth-birthday visit, morphine, Veslovsky's flirting, Nikolai's consumption, the Serbian volunteers and Levin's peasant epiphany. It closes with reception and afterlife: Dostoevsky's essay, Faulkner's answer, Garnett versus Pevear and Volokhonsky, the Karenin/Karenina debate, Garbo's two versions, Vivien Leigh, Sophie Marceau in Russia, Joe Wright's theatre stage and its costume Oscar, and Jared Diamond's principle. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its film adaptations and the Anna Karenina principle, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit anyone; the expert tier reaches Zheleznodorozhny and the Mussolini Cup.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Tolstoy himself call Anna Karenina?
His first true novel
He came to hate it while finishing the final instalments, yet finished it anyway.
Q 02In which year was Anna Karenina first published in book form?
1878
It had been serialised from 1875 to 1877 in a periodical, all but the last part.
Q 03In which periodical was Anna Karenina serialised between 1875 and 1877?
The Russian Messenger
All but the last part appeared there.
Q 04How does the novel's famous first sentence begin?
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
A 1997 bestseller turned it into the 'Anna Karenina principle' to explain why so few animals were domesticated.
Q 05What is the novel's epigraph, taken from Romans 12:19?
'Vengeance is mine; I will repay'
Romans is itself quoting Deuteronomy 32:35.
Q 06Into how many parts is Anna Karenina divided?
Eight
There are 239 chapters in all.
Q 07What is Anna's lover Vronsky's profession?
Cavalry officer
Their affair scandalises St Petersburg society and drives them to flee to Italy.
Q 08What is the occupation of Anna's husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin?
Senior statesman
He is twenty years older than Anna.
Q 09Which recurring motif provides the setting for several major plot points, including Anna's first sight of Vronsky and her death?
Trains and railway stations
On the day they meet, a railway worker is crushed by a train carriage; Anna dies the same way, in conscious symmetry.
Q 10Anna's brother opens the novel in trouble with his wife over an affair with whom?
The family's governess
Anna comes from St Petersburg to Moscow to patch things up and persuades his wife to forgive him.
Q 11Which character is Anna's brother?
Stepan 'Stiva' Oblonsky
He is a Moscow civil servant and man about town, 34 years old.
Q 12Which shy country landowner provides the novel's parallel love story with Kitty Shcherbatskaya?
Konstantin Levin
He has to propose twice before Kitty accepts, and his views match Tolstoy's own throughout the book.
Q 13Why does Kitty first refuse Levin's proposal?
She is in love with Vronsky and expects him to propose
Q 21What does Countess Lidia Ivanovna advise Karenin to tell his young son about his mother?
That she is dead
Anna nonetheless visits the boy uninvited on his ninth birthday and is discovered by Karenin.
Q 22Which drug does Anna become addicted to, first taking it to help her sleep at Vronsky's estate?
Morphine
Her jealousy and paranoia about Vronsky's fidelity deepen alongside the addiction.
Q 23How does Anna die?
She throws herself under a freight train
She jumps from ground level at the end of a platform, echoing the railway worker killed the day she met Vronsky.
Her mother favours Vronsky, her father Levin; at the ball Vronsky dances with Anna instead and Kitty is heartbroken.
Q 14What is the name of Vronsky's mare, whose back he breaks by riding her too hard in the steeplechase?
Frou-Frou
Anna had just told him she was pregnant, and Karenin, watching her reaction at the races, decides her behaviour is improper.
Q 15Where does Kitty go to recover after Vronsky's rejection ruins her health?
A German spa
There she meets the pious Varenka and Madame Stahl, whom her father exposes as faking illness.
Q 16What does Karenin threaten to take from Anna if she continues her affair?
Their son Seryozha
He also consults a lawyer about divorce, but the evidence he gathers is deemed insufficient proof.
Q 17What does Vronsky do after Karenin forgives him at Anna's sickbed following the birth of her daughter?
Tries to shoot himself
He survives; when Anna hears he is to be posted to Tashkent she becomes desperate, and they flee to Italy together.
Q 18What is the name of Anna and Vronsky's daughter?
Annie
Anna nearly dies giving birth to her; Karenin grows attached to the child.
Q 19Under Russian law of the period, who could request a divorce?
Only the innocent party in an affair
It required the guilty party to confess or to be caught in the act.
Q 20What hobby does Vronsky take up in Italy, without realising he lacks talent?
Painting
His conversation about art is 'extremely pretentious', and he grows bored while Anna is happy to be alone with him.
Q 24Obiralovka, the suburban station where Anna dies, was renamed what in 1939?
Zheleznodorozhny
The name means, roughly, 'railway town'; the town was later absorbed into Balashikha in 2015.
Q 25Where does the suicidal Vronsky go to fight in Part 8?
The Serbian revolt against the Turks
He joins Russian volunteers in what became the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78; the magazine's editor refused this pan-Slavist final part.
Q 26What conclusion does Levin reach after talking to a peasant at the end of the novel?
That the meaning of life is to serve God
He no longer questions the Christian faith taught to him in childhood, ending his suicidal despair.
Q 27Of what illness does Levin's brother Nikolai die, nursed by Kitty?
Consumption
Kitty proves far more capable at the deathbed than Levin, and his love for her grows.
Q 28Which guest's open flirting with the pregnant Kitty makes Levin so jealous he asks him to leave?
Veslovsky
The visitor promptly moves to Anna and Vronsky's neighbouring estate.
Q 29What did William Faulkner reply when asked to name the three greatest novels?
'Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and Anna Karenina'
Thomas Mann called it 'that very greatest novel of society' and Nabokov 'one of the greatest love stories in world literature'.
Q 30Which fellow Russian novelist published the 1877 essay 'Anna Karenina as a Fact of Special Importance'?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
It was later included in his A Writer's Diary.