Gunilla Heilborn ^(Swe) 37 hours and 3 minutes 9-12 February 2022

Programme

”In early autumn 2017, my book club decides that we should read Anna Karenina. The new translation is 864 pages long. It meets some resistance in the book club. Someone, I think it was Beata, refuses to read.

- It will take all autumn," she says.

Let's get this straight. It takes 37 hours and 3 minutes to read the whole book if you read at a speed of 250 words per minute. For someone who reads half an hour a day, it takes 74 days. Compare this to the TV series Breaking Bad. Five seasons. 62 one-hour-long episodes. With a viewing rate of one episode a day, it takes 62 days to watch the entire series. But most people watch more than one episode a day. Some people watch four episodes in a row. For them, it only takes 15 and a half days to get through all the episodes. For those who watch all the episodes in a row, it takes about 2 and a half days. For those who read Anna Karenina in one go, it takes only 1 and a half days. Just saying."

For those who haven't read the book or for those who have read it long ago and of course for those who can't be bothered to read it, 37 hours and 3 minutes now offers a survey of Tolstoy's masterpiece and some of the thoughts it evokes in a reader today. We are all interested in the past for one reason or another; who are we and how did we get here? Did we make a mistake? If we did, can we correct it or at least not repeat it? In this collective Russia investigation, we are guided by a number of dedicated individuals who are not afraid to examine questions such as: are we approaching the end of history? Should I, like Kitty and Levin*, perhaps move to the country?

”-People who are shocked by what is happening in the last three or four months in Russia are more likely to quote Tolstoy than Dostoevsky.”
- Tanya, literature student in Moscow.

* Kitty and Levin are two characters in Anna Karenina.