One of Penguin Classics’s most popular translations- now also in our elegant black spine dress
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109 of 119 people found the following review helpful.
The latest in a very rewarding trend
By David A. Heintz
This excellent new translation continues the trend to retranslate the monuments of fiction. From Magic Mountain to Man without Qualities, from Don Quixote to Madame Bovary, this movement proves again that great art is timeless, but interpretaion changes. In this way translation can be likened to the way two conductors can approach say, Mozart. It is still Mozart. It is always Mozart. But these are two interpretations.Further, just as Mozart sounds better on a state of the art stereo system (or at concert), the binding, layout, and paper selection can enhance the reading experience. In this case Viking has done a superb job. The paper even smells great!There is, finally, amother interpretation: that of age, and experience. I first read all of these books in my ‘teens and ‘twenties. I loved them then, but what did I know of life, or art? I am now sixty. The new translations give me an excuse, really a mandate, to reread them, and I am better for it.You will be too. Spending an evening with this marvelous translation of War and Peace is vastly more rewarding than reading anything on the bestseller lists, or, dare I say it, watching American Idol.As for me, I will wrap up Tolstoy this week, and move to book two of In Search of Lost Time (new translation.) Maybe I will finish Proust before I am seventy!Note to Amazon: perhaps you could develop a section on your web site for these new translations, so we know what is available and what is coming.
55 of 59 people found the following review helpful.
A Crystal-Clear Translation
By Brady Kelso
I’m thrilled with the new translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. While I have grown up with the Garnett and Maude translations, I am pleased by the clear, smooth style of this new version, especially in the use of dialogue by the soldiers and the conversations in general. The publishers have also given us a clean type style and the pages have wide gutters for reading ease. It’s a huge edition of over 1400 pages, but it’s easy to hold and read. Long live Leo Tolstoy!
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Great, but Penguin/Viking needs to rethink the one-volume format
By M. J. Newhouse
This is a lovely new translation of Tolstoy’s great work. It reads beautifully, although I must note that it is not tremendously better than other first-rate translations that are already available, e.g., the mellifluous translation by Rosemary Edmonds or even the time-tested translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude. I give it five stars because it is such a pleasure to read. However, Penguin and other publishers need to rethink how they produce a book of this heft. Penguin used to issue War and Peace in two volumes. They should go back to that practice. For the serious, dedicated reader, a book of this huge size and weight is a horrible inconvenience. It is simply impossible to carry around and read when one can–which is essential if one is a serious reader. Second, Penguin and other publishers should rethink having notes at the end of the book. New computer technology makes it easy to put notes at the bottom of the page. This would have two great advantages. First, it would increase readers’ pleasure and build up ther loyalty to the publisher. For example, I have the 1938 two-volume edition of the Maudes’ translation that was re-issued by the Heritage Press. The notes are at the bottom of the page and this makes reading so much easier. (As opposed to having to turn to the end of the vast Briggs volume or any other single-volume version.) Second, putting notes at the bottom of the page would force the editors to be succinct and (hopefully) to use notes only for those things that the educated reader might really want to know. In short, placing notes at the bottom of the page, where there is only limited space, would make the notes better in my view and more helpful.
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