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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.

Copyright 2004 by David Rodeback.
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