Details

ISBN-10: 0679776443
ISBN-13: 9780679776444
Publisher: Vintage
Publish Date: 03/25/1997
Dimensions: 7.90" L, 5.20" W, 1.00" H

Dead Souls

Translator: Richard Pevear
Translator: Larissa Volokhonsky

Paperback

Price: $18.00

Overview

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol’s wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for “dead souls”–deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them–we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov’s proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel’s lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.

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Reviews
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

"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

With an Introduction by Richard Pevear

More Reviews

Details

ISBN-10: 0679776443
ISBN-13: 9780679776444
Publisher: Vintage
Publish Date: 03/25/1997
Dimensions: 7.90" L, 5.20" W, 1.00" H
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