Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments. Widely regarded as a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first true novel. The novel is currently enjoying popularity, as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in "The Top Ten" in Time, which declared that Anna Karenina is the greatest novel ever written.