Android Karenina (Quirk Classic)

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters co-author Ben H. Winters is back with an all-new collaborator, legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and the result is Android Karenina an enhanced edition of the classic love story set in a dystopian world of robots, cyborgs, and interstellar space travel. As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: the tragic adulterous romance of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the much more hopeful marriage of Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya.These four, yearning for true love, live in a steampunk-inspired 19th century of mechanical butlers, extraterrestrial-worshiping cults, and airborne debutante balls. Their passions alone would be enough to consume them-but when a secret cabal of radical scientific revolutionaries launches an attack on Russian high society's high-tech lifestyle, our heroes must fight back with all their courage, all their gadgets, and all the power of a sleek new cyborg model like nothing the world has ever seen." Filled with the same blend of romance, drama, and fantasy that made the first two Quirk Classics New York Times best sellers, Android Karenina brings this celebrated series into the exciting world of science fiction.

From Publishers Weekly

The next installment in Quirk's much-heralded sci-fi/classics mashup series, this steampunk take on Anna Karenina discards tsarist Russia for an alternate reality where a miracle metal, gronzium, has fueled the development of a thriving robot culture. Carriages and candlesticks persist, but everything is mechanized, including the servants: at the peak of the robot hierarchy are the near-sentient "Class IIIs," humanoid robots who aid and comfort their upper-class owners. These futuristic additions are more than background filler, though; Winters incorporates an entire action-packed sci-fi sub-plot, with terrorist attacks from a group of renegade scientists, an alien invasion, and the growing menace of a certain scorned cyborg husband. The sci-fi elements are carefully accomplished, sometimes brilliantly extrapolated from the original. The Class IIIs, for example, also act as telling externalizations of their masters: cold, duty-bound Karenin becomes half-robot and childish Kitty gets a pink, mechanized ballerina companion. Tolstoy's text is more than strong enough to stand up to this sort of treatment, its force attenuated just enough to allow Winters (Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters) to integrate his additions-a feat he manages with aplomb. Illustrations. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The extraordinary success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) has spawned an entirely new genre. The publication of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2010) left readers wondering what famous figure or classic novel would be the subject of the next delightfully irreverent mash-up. Wonder no more, just sit back, relax, and prepare to consider Tolstoy's masterful Anna Karenina in a whole new light. Anyone who has ever delved into the works of the great Russian novelist knows that he was, first and foremost, a realist. Somehow Winters manages to pay homage to Tolstoy's pragmatic tone while investing this timeless, ill-fated love story with robots, cyborgs, androids, and a host of other familiar sf elements. As Anna and Count Vronsky embark on their scandalous affair, they must also battle a band of radical scientists intent on fomenting a revolution. When upstart machines rebel, adultery becomes the least of their problems. Although Tolstoy purists may sniff, the parallels to nineteenth-century Russia remain surprisingly true in this futuristic version of his timeless classic. Advise readers to suspend their disbelief and go along for the ride—most won't be disappointed. --Margaret Flanagan

New York Times

“Literary hybrids of Jane Austen novels and zombie stories? That’s so last year. Quirk Books, which released the best-selling novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, has seen the future of the mashup novel, and it is Leo Tolstoy and robots.”

Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed, via The New Yorker

“Anna’s nightmare, one of the most famous passages in Anna Karenina, clearly anticipates the ‘steampunk-inspired’ atmosphere of Android Karenina… Tolstoy didn’t know about steampunk or cyborgs, but he did know about the nightmarishness of steam power, unruly machines, and the creepy half-human status of the Russian peasant classes.”

Library Journal

“Creepy, thrilling, and highly enjoyable!”

io9

“Whenever a truly pulpy trend reaches its apotheosis like this, I can't help but wonder if we'll get a new classic out of it.”

The Onion AV Club

“Android Karenina lives up to its promise to make Tolstoy ‘awesomer.’”

Galley Cat

“Winters, a playwright, librettist, and author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, connects all of Tolstoy’s dots in the cleverly bizarre world he has created and he transforms a Russian novel into a reasonably demented work of science fiction.”

Techland

“With Android, Winters has given Tolstoy's beautiful Russian epic a steampunk edge, filling the book with robots, space travel and yes, even a few aliens.”

About the Author

Leo Tolsoy, the author of War and Peace, has been called the most brilliant master of realistic fiction in all literary history. He lived in Russia. Ben H. Winters collaborated with Jane Austen on the New York Times best seller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. He lives in Brooklyn.

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