Synopses & Reviews
From Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the best-selling, award-winning translators of
War and Peace and
Anna Karenina, comes a new, beautifully crafted, and eminently readable translation of Tolstoys most important short fiction.
Here are eleven incandescent stories from the mature author, some autobiographical, others moral parables, and all imaginative, transcendent, and evocatively drawn. They include The Prisoner of the Caucasus, inspired by Tolstoys experiences as a soldier in the Chechen War, and one of only two of his works that Tolstoy himself considered “good art”; Hadji Murat, the novella Harold Bloom called “the best story in the world,” featuring the real-life war hero Hadji Murat, a Chechen rebel who ravaged his Russian occupiers only to defect to the Russian side after a falling-out with his own commander; The Devil, a tale of sexual obsession based on Tolstoys relationship with a married peasant woman on his estate in the years before his marriage; and the celebrated The Death of Ivan Ilyich, an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption.
Pevear and Volokhonskys translation captures the richness, immediacy, and multiplicity of Tolstoys language, and reveals the author as a passionate moral guide, an unflinching seeker of truth, and, ultimately, a creator of enduring and universal art.
Synopsis
A vibrant translation of Tolstoy’s most important short fiction by the award-winning translators of
War and Peace.
Here are eleven masterful stories from the mature author, some autobiographical, others moral parables, and all told with the evocative power that was Tolstoy’s alone. They include “The Prisoner of the Caucasus,” inspired by Tolstoy's own experiences as a soldier in the Chechen War, “Hadji Murat,” the novella Harold Bloom called “the best story in the world,” “The Devil,” a fascinating tale of sexual obsession, and the celebrated “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption.
Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation captures the richness, immediacy, and multiplicity of Tolstoy’s language, and reveals the author as a passionate moral guide, an unflinching seeker of truth, and ultimately, a creator of enduring and universal art.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Synopsis
A vibrant translation of Tolstoy's most important short fiction by the award-winning translators of War and Peace.
Here are eleven masterful stories from the mature author, some autobiographical, others moral parables, and all told with the evocative power that was Tolstoy's alone. They include The Prisoner of the Caucasus, inspired by Tolstoy's own experiences as a soldier in the Chechen War, Hadji Murat, the novella Harold Bloom called the best story in the world, The Devil, a fascinating tale of sexual obsession, and the celebrated The Death of Ivan Ilyich, an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption.
Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation captures the richness, immediacy, and multiplicity of Tolstoy's language, and reveals the author as a passionate moral guide, an unflinching seeker of truth, and ultimately, a creator of enduring and universal art.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
Together, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Gogol. They were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for their versions of Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoys Anna Karenina), and their translation of Dostoevskys Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are married and live in France.
Table of Contents
IntroductionThe Prisoner of the Caucasus
The Diary of a Madman
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Kreutzer Sonata
The Devil
Master and Man
Father Sergius
After the Ball
The Forged Coupon
Alyosha the Pot
Hadji Murat
Glossary of Caucasian Mountaineer Words
Notes