David Rodeback's Blog

Thursday, August 5, 2004

Summer Reading: Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is one of the three Russian novels I love most. I've read it in both English and the original Russian. Over the winter I read it again, to see how I liked the new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. It's a splendid new translation, on a par with their best-in-class translations of Dostoevsky novels and others.

It seems I am only slightly ahead of a crowd. Oprah picked the new translation as part of her summer reading this year. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it's ranking rather high at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Something in me recoils a little at finding myself agreeing with Oprah, but when she's right, she's right. This is a great read.

Comment on this entry
(Readable, relevant, civilized, substantive responses will be posted, regardless of position.)

Copyright 2004 by David Rodeback.
All rights reserved.
Permission is given to publish this article elsewhere on the Web or via e-mail only under these conditions: The article is published intact and unchanged, and is properly credited to the author; and a visible link is included to the article's page at LocalCommentary.com.