FYODOR MIKAILOVICH DOSTEOVSKY’S life was as dark and dramatic as
the great novels he wrote. He was born in Moscow in 1821. A short
first novel, Poor Folk (1846) brought him instant success, but his
writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion
against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. In prison he was given the “silent
treatment” for eight months (guards even wore velvet soled boots)
before he was led in front a firing squad. Dressed in a death
shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited execution, when
suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence. He then spent
four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to
suffer from epilepsy, and he returned to St. Petersburg only a full
ten years after he had left in chains.
His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a profoundly
religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. But it
was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of
utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that
gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete Crime and
Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868–69), The Possessed (1871–72),
and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80). When Dostoevsky died in 1881,
he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers
and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant
among writers of world literature.
Praise for previous translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky, winners of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize:
The Brothers Karamazov
“One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevsky’s original.” —New
York Times Book Review
“It may well be that Dostoevsky’s [world], with all its resourceful
energies of life and language, is only now–and through the medium
of [this] new translation–beginning to come home to the
English-speaking reader.” —New York Review of Books
Crime and Punishment
“The best [translation] currently available.... An especially
faithful re-creation...with a coiled-spring kinetic energy....
Don’t miss it.” —Washington Post Book World
“This fresh, new translation...provides a more exact, idiomatic,
and contemporary rendition of the novel that brings Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s tale achingly alive.... It succeeds beautifully.” —San
Francisco Chronicle
“Reaches as close to Dostoevsky’s Russian as is possible in
English....The original’s force and frightening immediacy is
captured....The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation will become the
standard version.” —Chicago Tribune
Demons
“The merit in this edition of Demons resides in the technical
virtuosity of the translators....They capture the feverishly
intense, personal explosions of activity and emotion that manifest
themselves in Russian life.” —New York Times Book Review
“[Pevear and Volokhonsky] have managed to capture and differentiate
the characters’ many voices....They come into their own when faced
with Dostoevsky’s wonderfully quirky use of varied speech
patterns.... A capital job of restoration.” —Los Angeles Times
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
