Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky’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
“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
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