First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Whether you’re revisiting a favorite or reading this world classic for the first time, you’ll be swept up by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation. Said The New Criterion, “Pevear and Volokhonsky have done a masterly job translating what ought to be considered the definitive English edition of Doctor Zhivago.”
Looking for other Russians reads—or, perhaps, just ready to dive into more of Pevear and Volokhonsky’s “fresh and readable” (The New York Review of Books) work? Read on for a select list of their translations.
By Leo Tolstoy
“Shimmering…. [It] offers an opportunity to see this great classic afresh, to approach it not as a monument but rather as a deeply touching story about our contradictory human hearts.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
By Leo Tolstoy
“The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories is a great collection well translated. As a lover of Tolstoy’s work, one couldn’t ask for more, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
—André Alexis, The Globe and Mail
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
““The best [translation of Crime and Punishment] currently available…An especially faithful re-creation…with a coiled-spring kinetic energy…Don’t miss it.”
—The Washington Post Book World
By Nikolai Gogol
“The present translators have contrived to reveal [Gogol’s qualities] to the non-Russian reader at last, and virtually for the first time.”
—John Bayley, The New York Review of Books
Click to read an excerpt from Doctor Zhivago and to read an interview with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky at The Millions.
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