Occupation: Heroine.

Interests: Yearning, childbirth, suicide.

Oh, her! Yes, a handsome woman, wife of Karenin, the St Petersburg government official. I thought she threw herself under a ... Sshh!! Don't give away the ending.

But surely everyone knows that, fearing she has been supplanted in Vronsky's affections, she goes to the railway station ... No, they don't! In fact that book about her is currently top of the New York Times, USA Today and Publisher's Weekly bestseller lists.

What, Leo Tolstoy's 838-page magnum opus finished in 1877 and now appearing in a new English translation by Richard Pevearand Larissa Volokhonsky? That's the one.

And why would so many Americans suddenly buy such a good book? Does there have to be a reason?

Yes. Well, Oprah Winfrey's book club has just recommended it.

Is it really wise for people without the proper training to be tackling two-and-a-half inches of 19th-century Russian literature? Oprah thinks so. "I believe we can do this," she said.

That's sweet. Did she like the book? Oh, she hasn't actually read it yet.

Outrageous! Oh no, it's actually very exciting. You see, she will now be reading the book alongside her audience for the first time ever.

That is exciting. Yes it is.

She'd better complete it. Oh, she will. She vows to "finish every page".

I bet the publishers are pleased. "We are thrilled by the rapid response that Oprah's viewers and avid readers have had for Anna Karenina," was how Norman Lidofsky put it.

Not villainous, moustachioed Count Lidofsky who was seen flirting with beautiful but unworldly Ekaterina Shcherbatskaya in the summer house? No. President of paperback sales at Penguin Lidofsky.

Not to be confused with: How Clean Is Your Dacha?, Profit From Property with Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's How to Cook and Speeding Steam Trains: a Rough Guide.