watermelonsugar

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky

“I'd always meant to read this book (I'd seen all the movies and mini-series) but bought my copy one day - the same one as in this picture - on impulse, love at first sight. It's just a pleasure to hold and to look at, solid and beautiful and promising.

So I already knew the story (though if you've seen a movie but not something longer, you've probably been deprived of the whole Levin plot, which is half the book) but that hardly matters. There's no way to spoil the pleasure of reading this book because the writing, the observations, the clearly-drawn moments are as compelling as the plot. While reading this book, you can feel you're living it.

The couple who did this translation were interviewed in a CBC series on translating, and they talked about how they work - they both speak both Russian and English but each has only one as a mother tongue, so they pass the drafts back and forth to make sure the tone and idioms and everything work to be true to the original and sound right in translation. I haven't compared it with another translation, but I like the one I read :).”