Friday book post
June 11, 2010 Leave a comment
Well, last week I started with a post about one of my favorite non-fiction books, so this week, I’ll go fiction. I absolutely love Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I’ve also read War and Peace, which is a great book, but really could have used a good editor (less philosophy of history, more novel). For my money, nobody writing fiction gets the human condition better than Tolstoy. Throughout both novels, I was consistently awed by Tolstoy’s ability to limn universal truths of human nature from life in upper-class 19th century Russia.
It’s also worth noting that as long as these works are, and as daunting as reading Tolstoy sounds, he’s incredibly readable. Just a terrific narrator telling you a story that you want to keep spending time with. Of course, Tolstoy is often grouped with Dostoevsky, but alas, the latter has left me disappointed in comparison. I had especially high hopes for the beloved by many Brothers Karamazov, but after slogging through the first hundred pages, could force myself no further.
Several years ago the New Yorker had a terrific article on the husband and wife translation team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky who have injected new life and style into translations of great Russian literature. I’ve always been intrigued by their team work– apparently Pevear has a genuine writer’s ability to craft prose whereas Volokhonsky, a native Russian, has terrific insight into the most appropriate translations. Put them together, and it brings these Russian novels alive in a new way (not that I plan on comparing with the older translations).
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