The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature

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However much anyone loves Russian literature, it’s easy to see that, generally speaking, from the outside, it is hugely off-putting. First, there’s the issue of translation. How do you know which translation to choose? If you’re struggling to get through a book, is it the fault of the author or of the translator? Or – God forbid! – of you, the reader? And in any case, even if it is a very good translation, isn’t every translation a betrayal of the original? What if it’s too good a translation and all the original meaning has been stripped out and anglicized? You’ll never read it like a Russian would read it, so what’s the point?

These are the kinds of arguments that usually go through someone’s mind when approaching the entity people used to call ‘the Russians’ (meaning ‘the great Russian classics’). They’re the reason there’s a photograph which surfaces on the internet from time to time which depicts a bookshelf proudly showcasing a much-loved copy of Anna Karenina. Squashed between other books on the shelf, the spine of the book is bent out of shape an eighth of the way across. The rest of it is pristine and untouched. The picture says it all. This is a book lots of people start (and restart, often many times) but not everyone finishes. But it’s also a book no one ever quite gives up on. It’s still sitting there, hopefully, on the shelf, waiting for someone to get past the first hundred pages. We all have books like that, books whose spine we hope to crack all the way across one day.

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