How Reading the Novel Anna Karenina (Through a Wall) Saved A Somali Inmate’s Life

The man was locked in solitary confinement in a Somali jail. The novel the man “read” was Leo Tolstoy’s  Anna Karenina. An inmate in an adjoining cell “read” the book to the inmate by tapping the novel–all eight hundred pages–through the jail cell wall using a percussive code that the two men, who never saw each other, devised. “Reading” Anna Karenina, the man says, saved his life.

During Spring 2017, Liberal Arts Department reading enthusiasts gathered together to read Anna Karenina, the book that saved the life of an incarcerated, forgotten, and despairing man. Professor Leon Steinmetz convened the meetings and read the book in English and its original Russian. Who said literature doesn’t set you free?

Starting September 22nd, Liberal Arts Professor Emeritus Athans Boulukos will leading a similar reading group–this one reading late Shakespeare plays. Who knows what jail cells that reading group may liberate? Join the reading group…for the joy of reading.

Click the blue button below to hear the story of the man who read through walls.