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.
Richard Pevear has published translations of Alain, Yves Bonnefoy,
Alberto Savinio, Pavel Florensky, and Henri Volohonsky, as well as
two books of poetry. He has received fellowships or grants for
translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram
Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and the French Ministry of
Culture.
Larissa Volokhonsky was born in Leningrad. She has translated works
by the prominent Orthodox theologians Alexander Schmemann and John
Meyendorff into Russian. Together, Pevear and Volokhonsky have
translated Dead Souls and The Collected Tales by Nikolai Gogol, The
Complete Short Novels of Anton Chekhov, and The Brothers Karamazov,
Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, Demons, The Idiot,
and The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
They were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize
for their version of The Brothers Karamazov, and more recently
Demons was one of three nominees for the same prize. They are
married and live in France.
“In the variety of its happenings, the assortment of its
characters, the intensity of its passions, and the effect of its
conflicts, The Adolescent is the most captivating of all
Dostoevsky’s novels.” –Konstantin Mochulsky, author of Dostoevsky:
His Life and Work
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
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
“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
With an Introduction by Richard Pevear
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