Social distancing might mean you’re stuck at home, but you don’t have to be alone: Novelist Yiyun Li would like you to invite her and Leo Tolstoy into your house. (While maintaining a six-foot distance, of course.)
The independent publisher A Public Space is sponsoring a project called Tolstoy Together, a “free virtual book club” in which Li, the author of Kinder Than Solitude and Where Reasons End, will guide readers in a conversation about War and Peace.
“War and Peace is a perfect book to read together for the duration of our necessary isolation,” Li writes on a webpage for the project. “My edition (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) is about 1,200 pages. It will take us about 30 minutes to read 12-15 pages a day (much less than the time many Americans spend on social media), and we will finish the novel in three months—just in time for summer, and with our spirits restored.”
The book club begins on Wednesday, when Li will choose a passage from the book and post it on A Public Space’s website and Twitter and Instagram accounts. Readers will post their thoughts about the passage using the hashtag #TolstoyTogether.
“I have found that the more uncertain life is, the more solidity and structure Tolstoy’s novels provide,” Li writes. “In these times, one does want to read an author who is so deeply moved by the world that he could appear unmoved in his writing.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
