Great Russian Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) | Leonid Andreyev, Anton Chekhov, ... |...

Great Russian Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) | Leonid Andreyev, Anton Chekhov, ... | Who are the translators?

books:

Great Russian Shor...

	Great Russian Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) Leonid Andreyev, Anton Chekhov, ... Dover Publications, 2003 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Twelve powerful works of fiction, including Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades," Gogol's "The Overcoat," Turgenev's "The District Doctor," Dostoyevsky's "White Nights," Tolstoy's "How Much Land Does a Man Need?," plus "The Clothes Mender" by Leskov, "The Lady with the Toy Dog" by Chekhov, "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" by Gorky, "Lazarus" by Andreyev, and more

Stories by great masters, and stories of Incident primarily

'Dover Editions' do not provide the frills. We do not get a real introduction to the stories, to the Russian story in particular. We do not get notes on the stories. And we do not even get the names of the translators.
But we do get some of the finest of all Russian stories. These include those by the great masters Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorky. I did not compare translations of the stories with those by well- known translators of Russian Literature.
I focused on reading and enjoying stories by writers whose work I do not know Vsevolod M. Garshin, Theodor Sologub, Alexander I. Kuprin, Leonid Andreyev. Each of these stories has a narrative and characters which held my attention. They were story- stories whose focus seemed to be on incident and outcome- and not in revealing as in Gogol's 'Overcoat' or Chekhov's " Lady with a Dog" complex character and relationships.
I enjoyed most of these stories and believe most readers will also.

for more information click here

Who are the translators?

This is a nice, cheap collection of Russian stories by a wide range of authors from the 19th and early 20th century, including some very nice tales by authors who are less famous (Garshin, Andreyev, Kuprin), in addition to gems by the well-known masters (Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov.) I would especially recommend "The Queen of Spades", a Pushkin ghost story that was turned into the great opera "Pique Dame" by Tchaikovsky, but one I've seldom seen anthologized.

One problem: I found no information in the book about who translated the stories. There are some pretty bad translations in the public domain, especially by Constance Garnett, which were written long ago (under madly intense deadlines in Garnett's case) with stiff, Victorian dialogue and known to contain inaccuracies. So one should not get this book unless one needs a copy -- any copy -- of the stories in the list, many of which can be obtained for free from Project Gutenberg (Gutenberg.org), where the translator is at least usually listed (again, avoid translations by Garnett, and stick with Maude if possible.) And if money is no object up to $10-$15, then one should seek out more modern translations, which tend to be not only more readable, but also more accurate.

Still, any differences in various translations will be slight, so this is a pretty good buy as a small gift for a casual fan of Russian Literature.

for more information click here

products you might be interested in