Anna Karenina2014
The modern reader’s best all-rounder. Rosamund Bartlett, a Tolstoy biographer, writes clear, graceful contemporary English that stays faithful to the sense without the deliberate awkwardness of Pevear and Volokhonsky, and the Oxford World’s Classics apparatus is excellent. She threads the needle most first-time readers want: accurate and well annotated, but genuinely pleasurable to read at length. Purists who prize Tolstoy’s repetitions may find her a touch too smooth, and it is in copyright, so not free. But if you want one modern Anna Karenina to read cover to cover and trust, this is the one to reach for first.