MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti) – Some 700 people, including international celebrities and Russians, will take part in an online reading marathon dedicated to the novel "Anna Karenina" this fall, launched by Google and the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Yasnaya Polyana.
"There are photographs, where the whole Tolstoy family – Leo Nikolayevich himself, his children and wife – sit in the living room, and one of them is reading a book aloud. In the 21st century, we still want to organize such home readings, to empathize with the characters together and to praise the beautiful text. Except today, it doesn't matter if the listener or the one who will pick up your reading is thousands of kilometers away. The Internet gives new technological possibilities. 'Anna Karenina' will resonate with everybody's soul, because it is one of the best books in the world," Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper quoted Fyokla Tolstaya, the writer's great-great-grand-daughter and the curator of the project, as saying.
Google+ and YouTube will broadcast live the 30-hour marathon titled "Karenina. Live Edition" on October 3-4, when actors, journalists, musicians, artists, scientists, bloggers and even Tolstoy’s descendants, as well as Internet users will take turns to read one of Russia's best-known novels.
The idea to revive the tradition of Tolstoy readings but with the use of modern technologies was first presented by presidential adviser Vladimir Tolstoy, the writer's great-great-grandson.
Tolstoy's descendants have put much effort into bringing the writer's heritage into the modern age. Last year, Tolstoy’s entire body of work – all 90 volumes – along with comprehensive biographical materials was published online and is available for free at the Tolstoy.ru website. It features texts that were scanned and proofread three times by more than 3,000 volunteers from 49 countries.
"Anna Karenina" was published in 1878 and continues to top lists of the greatest novels of all time together with another of Tolstoy’s epics, “War and Peace.” Tolstoy’s works are part of the obligatory high-school curriculum in the Soviet Union and Russia.
