The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

Product Information

If you are familiar with the novel already, or you’re up for a challenge, try Pevear and Volokhonsky for a more authentically Russian reading experience. Among Garnett’s translations are Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed ( Demons), War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. About the Garnett translation of The Brothers Karamazov

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are literary translators best known for their collaborative English translations of classic Russian literature. Individually, Pevear has also translated into English works from French, Italian, and Greek. The couple's collaborative translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov). Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize. This, of course, is what happens when the editor runs a negative review in the first place, which isn’t often. Usually a magazine will only run a hatchet piece contrary to the conventional wisdom if it comes from a big name, and big names don’t typically write hatchet jobs. Those pieces make enemies, and they have too much to lose.And, as Morson points out in his Commentary article, translations of classic works are even more likely to get raves than the average much-hyped critical darling. Most writers who get that sort of assignment are excited for the chance to talk about a classic work that means a great deal to them. They gush about the novel, naturally, and their enthusiasm often embraces the translation along with it. Pevear, Richard (14 October 2007). "Tolstoy's Transparent Sounds". New York Times . Retrieved 2008-04-23. She is a professor of Slavic languages and literature at Northwestern University. She has a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. She is the author of Redemption and the Merchant of God : Dostoevsky’s Economy of Salvation and Antisemitism. About the Garnett/Matlaw/Oddo translation of The Brothers Karamazov Extracts have been included below so that you can see how the different translations sound. The Brothers Karamazov: Other Info and Resources

I first read Brothers when I was a high school student, puzzling over profound, religious questions: is there a God? if so, why does evil exist? And if not, how should we live our lives? I was studying the Russian language and had begun reading the great works of its literature in translation. Yes, this is true. It’s also something to do with what a man I once knew said to me about his sister. It was the only thing he ever said about his sister, and what he said was that she played an imaginary board game with imaginary pieces. That was like the thing Henry James said about going up the stair and finding the one needful bit of information. A lot of what I write is about the need, the fear, the desire for solitude. I find the Brontës’ joint imagination absolutely appalling. So, in a sense, the whole thing was, as you rightly say, a construct and a smokescreen. Hunnewell, Susannah (Summer 2015). "Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Art of Translation No. 4". The Paris Review. Summer 2015 (213).

Just when you think, Dmitry knows how to sew?, the detective questioning him asks, “You know how to sew?” The detectives are from the land of realism. In “The Brothers Karamazov,” narrative unfurls at the mad and authentic pace of human emotion.There is something about the rhythm and choice of words that appeal to me, and that helps me understand the characters.” Larissa always says that if it hadn’t been for 107th Street, we’d never have been married. When I moved to New York, I took up cabinetmaking. That’s how I earned a living. Lithub: “The Quiet Rebels of Russian Translation: In conversation with Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear” We work separately at first. Larissa produces a complete draft, following the original as closely as possible, with many marginal comments and observations. From that, plus the original Russian, I make my own complete draft. Then we work closely together to arrive at a third draft, on which we make our 'final' revisions." [8] Pevear and Volokhonsky have won the pen Translation Prize twice, for The Brothers Karamazovand Anna Karenina. Pevear, who has also translated French and Italian works, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the American University of Paris. In addition to translating Russian contemporary poets, Volokhonsky, who attended Yale Divinity School, has translated theological texts into Russian. They have two trilingual children.