When I began reading Anna Karenina this year, for the third or fourth time, I was determined to finish it, even if it required dogged perseverance to get through all 800+ pages. The new translation (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) required nothing so dreary. According to the jacket copy, this translation doesn't "soften" the "robust, and sometimes shocking, quality of Tolstoy's writing," making it a "beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable." It did seem far more engaging than my memory of the Norton Annotated edition, which I wrestled repeatedly with before.

Before I read this book, I'm not sure I understood what a novel about "the human condition" was supposed to be about—let alone understood the human condition. Though it's long and daunting and has a large cast, Anna Karenina is a simple human story, episodic and fully engaging in the telling. I lost count of the times I personally identified with the characters' plights, frustrations, and longings. Not just one or two of them, but all of the major characters earned my true empathy and admiration: Anna, Levin, Oblonksy, Kitty, Vronsky. Elsewhere in this site I quoted this particular passage:

'But in what am I to blame?' Alexei Alexandrovich said to himself. And this question always called up another question in him—whether they feel differently, love differently, marry differently, these other people, these Vronskys and Oblonskys . . . These gentlemen of the bed-chamber with their fat calves. And he pictured a whole line of these juicy, strong, undoubting people, who, against his will, had always and everywhere attracted his curious attention.

My enthusiasm for the book persuaded one of my colleagues to read it in Russian. Unfortunately for her the original is about 100 pages longer. When she finishes, we plan to hold the inaugural meeting of our book club.