Review
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A truly great translation ... Sometimes new
translations of old favourites are surplus to our requirements.
Sometimes, though, a new translation really makes us see a
favourite masterpiece afresh. And this English version of Crime
and Punishment really is better ... Crime and Punishment, as well
as being an horrific story and a compelling drama, is also
extremely funny. Ready brings out this quality well ... That
-edge between sentimentality and farce has been so skilfully
and delicately captured here ... Ready's version is colloquial,
compellingly modern and - in so far as my amateurish knowledge of
the language goes - much closer to the Russian. ... The central
scene in the book is a masterpiece of translation (A. N. Wilson
Spectator)
I was delighted to discover Oliver Ready's new translation of
Crime and Punishment ... It is brimful of a young man's rage and
energy and bullshit. I adored it (Peter Carey)
This vivid, stylish and rich rendition by Oliver Ready compels
the attention of the reader in a way that none of the others I've
read comes close to matching. Using a clear and forceful
mid-20th-century idiom, Ready gives us an entirely new kind of
access to Dostoyevsky's singular, self-reflexive and at times
unnervingly comic text. This is the Russian writer's story of
moral revolt, guilt and possible regeneration turned into a new
work of art ... [It] will give a jolt to the nervous system to
anyone interested in the enigmatic Russian author (John Gray New
Statesman, 'Books of the Year')
Oliver Ready's translation of Crime and Punishment . . . is a
five-star hit, which will make you see the original with new eyes
(A. N. Wilson Times Literary Supplement, 'Books of the Year')
At last we have a translation that brings out the wild humour and
vitality of the original (Robert Chandler)
I was ed over, by the novel itself and the utterly brilliant
translation, which grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go. In
the course of my work, I go through ains of nonfiction to
try to understand the world. This summer, I was reminded of the
power of a novel to uncover something much deeper about the human
spirit
(Fareed Zakaria The New York Times Book Review)
A tour de force built from prose that is not only impeccable in
its own right but also perfectly suited to the story, its
characters, its epoch and themes. We should treasure this new
translation and, indeed, this new book (New York Journal of
Books)
A dazzlingly agile and robust new translation . . . Ready, who
has a practiced ear for Russian dialect and a natural grace with
English, is exceptionally deft at navigating [the novel's]
challenges ... His ability to reproduce the whole heady brew of
Dostoyevsky's novel in a consistent but nimble modern English
ought to be applauded (Los Angeles Review of Books)
Oliver Ready's version is outstanding in finding le mot juste for
all of Dostoevsky's graphic verbs and odd objects (few Russian
writers have a lexical range to equal Dostoevsky's) (The Times
Literary Supplement)
Ready's translation is nothing less than a wonder. He mirrors the
tonal shifts in Dostoyevsky's original more nimbly than any
English-language translator has before, and he catches the dark
humour that runs through the book mostly below its surface, and
best of all, he captures the essential, unchanging absurdity of
Raskolnikov perfectly ... Ready's version crackles with grubby,
demented vitality (Steve Donoghue Open Letters Monthly)
About the Author
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in
1821. His debut, the epistolary novella Poor Folk (1846), made
his name. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with the
politically subversive 'Petevsky circle' and until 1854 he
lived in a convict prison in Omsk, Siberia. From this experience
came The House of the Dead (1860-2). In 1860 he began the journal
Vremya (Time). Already married, he fell in love with one of his
contributors, Appollinaria Suslova, eighteen years his junior,
and developed a ruinous passion for roulette. After the death of
his first wife, Maria, in 1864, Dostoyevsky completed Notes from
Underground and began work towards Crime and Punishment (1866).
The major novels of his late period are The Idiot (1868), Demons
(1871-2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). He died in 1881.
Oliver Ready is Research Fellow in Russian Society and Culture at
St Antony's College, Oxford. He is general editor of the
anthology, The Ties of Blood: Russian Literature from the 21st
Century (2008), and Consultant Editor for Russia, Central and
Eastern Europe at the Times Literary Supplement.