Crime and Punishment

” “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 knife-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, “The Spectator” “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” “At last we have a translation that brings out the wild humour and vitality of the original.” –Robert Chandler, “PEN Atlas” “What a pleasure it is to see Oliver Ready’s new translation bring renewed power to one of the world’s greatest works of fiction… . Ready’s work is of substantial and superb quality… . [His] version portrays more viscerally and vividly the contradictory nature of Raskolnikov’s consciousness… . Ready evokes the crux of “Crime and Punishment” with more power than the previous translators have … with an enviably raw economy of prose.” –“The Curator” “Oliver Ready’s dynamic translation certainly succeeds in implicating new readers to Dostoyevsky’s old novel.” –“The Times Literary Supplement” “Ready’s new translation of “Crime and Punishment” is thoughtful and elegant [and] shows us once again why this novel is one of the most intriguing psychological studies ever written. His translation also manages to revive the disturbing humor of the original… . In some places, Ready’s version echoes Pevear and Volokhonsky’s prize-winning Nineties version, but he often renders Dostoyevsky’s text more lucidly while retaining its deliberately uncomfortable feel… . Ready’s colloquial, economical use of language gives the text a new power.” –“Russia Beyond the Headlines” “[A] five-star hit, which will make you see the original with new eyes.”“”–A. N. Wilson, ““The Times Literary Supplement”,” “Books of the Year”

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 ‘Petrashevsky 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.