Brothers Karamazov (World's Classics) - Softcover

Dostoevsky, F. M.

4.37

336,321 ratings by Goodreads

9780192826640: Brothers Karamazov (World's Classics)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192826646 ISBN 13: 9780192826640

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1994

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Dostoevsky's last novel, "The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectuall Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, freedom of will, the collective nature of guilt, and the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic; the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author's most cherished characters and causes are presented in an irreverent light, so that there appears no sharp distinction between health and disease or right or wrong. The power and impetus of the novel come largely from the eloquent voices of its numerous characters, and this translation aims to do justice to Dostoevsky's dramatic virtuosity, particularly in his use of the spoken word.

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Review:

"[Dostoevsky is] at once the most literary and compulsively readable of novelists we continue to regard as great . . . The Brothers Karamazov stands as the culmination of his art-his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book. [This] scrupulous rendition can only be welcomed. It returns us to a work we thought we knew, subtly altered and so made new again." -Washington Post Book World

"A miracle . . . Every page of the new Karamazov is a permanent standard, and an inspiration." -The Times (London)

"One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevsky's original." -New York Times Book Review

"Absolutely faithful . . . Fulfills in remarkable measure most of the criteria for an ideal translation . . . The stylistic accuracy and versatility of registers used . . . bring out the richness and depth of the original in a way similar to a faithful and sensitive restoration of a painting." -The Independent

"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

"Heartily recommended to any reader who wishes to come as close to Dostoevsky's Russian as it is possible." -Joseph Frank, Princeton University

With an Introduction by Malcolm V. Jones

About the Author:

Born in Latvia but now living in London, Ignat Avsey is Senior Lecturer in Russian language and Literature at the University of Westminster.

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