Tolstoy Takes the Top

While Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was first published in book form 126 years ago, the Penguin edition, specifically chosen by Oprah as her latest book club pick, is a new translation published in 2001. In announcing her pick on May 31, Oprah was very specific: this translation is the one she wants her viewers to read, and it is also the one she herself is reading (this is the first time, she told her massive TV audience, that she selected a book she hadn't read yet). Husband-and-wife team Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky's proposed translation was rejected by many publishers before Penguin's British imprint bought it in 1998. The publisher had been selling between 10,000 and 15,000 copies of the award-winning translation each year, pre-Oprah. Penguin's current in-print total is 961,030. V-p and director of publicity Maureen Donnelly noted that the Oprah book club people had been pleased with the "extra mile" the house went for Oprah's first classic book club pick, East of Eden, and asked Penguin to do belly bands for Anna Karenina as Oprah's Book Club Summer Selection. Oprah has also produced a bookmark listing the weeks and where readers should be—which page and chapter—to keep up with her, as well as a list of the book's many characters. Penguin will reproduce the bookmark and send it to accounts, and will put it on easels and shelf-talkers. The translators will do a radio satellite tour, and Oprah will air 14 promos throughout the summer to keep the buzz going. On May 31, the book ranked 26,206 on Amazon.com; by end of the day it was #1.