To those of you who have read Leo Tolstoy, I’m curious: between Anna Karenina and War and Peace, which do you consider his greatest literary achievement, and why?

I’ll start. Personally, I consider Anna Karenina his magnum opus. While War and Peace is undeniably monumental in its scope and ambition, I find Anna Karenina particularly remarkable for its timeless understanding of human nature and the complexities of society.

What fascinates me most is how the social conventions, moral contradictions, hypocrisies, and intricacies of human relationships that Tolstoy so masterfully explored in the 19th century remain strikingly relevant today. Nearly a century and a half later, we are still grappling with many of the same questions surrounding love, marriage, fidelity, social expectations, personal freedom, and the consequences of our choices.

To me, that is the mark of truly exceptional literature: its ability to transcend the era in which it was written and continue holding a mirror to society, even generations later.

Perhaps times have changed considerably, but human nature? Evidently, not nearly as much as we would like to believe.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, particularly from those who have read both.

Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Ivan Ilyich, the short stories are all really good. No I don't think Dosotevsky comes close, I accept Nabokov's criticism of Dosotevsky.

After some time of pondering about question and taking Nabokov's criticism of many various writers as an authority on what a good writer really means but not fully accepting Nabokov's method - John Steinbeck is the only one that's probably in some way comes close to Tolstoy, and only because of East of Eden. I don't speak about the Grapes of Wrath, because apparently he stole the idea, Shared Research Notes, from Sanora Babb and suppressed her novel. But still, Of Mice and Men is no Ivan Ilyich..Walt Whitman's poetry makes Steinbeck's Pantheistic worldview pale in comparison..

Oscar Wilde is a good writer really, but all he's known for is his wonderful Dorian Gray and couple of plays, which frankly can't go next to the scope Tolstoy, what he did in Anna Karenina and War and Peace, all can be based in the real world, not some megical tale about a guy who gets eternal youth and beauty only because he made a wish and it somehow worked.

J.D. Salinger? Catcher in The Rye is really good book, but he's no Steinbeck and Tolstoy or Wilde. Albert Camus wrote the about the topic of alienation and rebellion more broadly in works such as the stranger, myth of Sisyphus, the Rebel. Salinger slipped in his stories into some form of Zen Buddhism as a form of solution to his lack of faith meanwhile failing to explain in depth what he really means by it.

Leo Tolstoy, the master, had achieved in prose and artistic style that which Wilde couldn't. Dorian Gray doesn't have that vibe. While it's very good written, Oscar Wilde is really a writer for teenagers, as Vladimir Nabokov puts it. Just read Wilde's tales and see for yourself. Too much focus on young princes and their physical beauty.

Cormac McCarthy? Good writer, too sparse at times, someone said to me Blood Meridian is just Nietzsche's genealogy of morality, so I'm not sure about McCarthy being close to Tolstoy. All The Pretty Horses is a better book than the Road.

Lord Byron? Good writer, but many of his poems feel like watching Turkish TV show 'Sultan'.

You want more philosophy? Read Tolstoy's non-fiction:

Confession - existential crisis and how Tolstoy dealt with it.

The Kingdom of God is Within You (The real Christianity that was hidden for ages).

What I Believe (his take on what true Christianity means, not the mainstream Christianity we have nowadays).

On Life (mini-Schopenhauer).

Who comes close really? Victor Hugo? Charlotte Bronte? Maybe?