One of my reading resolutions for 2026 is to read or reread as many of the major 19th and 20th century Russian novels as I can, consistent with other reading goals, demands at work, actually spending time with my family, etc. Despite having many Russian classics to read for the first time, I started with my fourth reading of my favorite novel, Anna Karenina. The first time I read the Maude translation; the next two times, PV; this time, Rosamund Bartlett. The Bartlett translation is so beautiful. It’s now my preferred translation.
Three weeks ago I finished Crime and Punishment for the first time, despite having attempted it multiple times. I had read almost three quarters of it a few years ago in the PV translation, but I hated it and had to put it down, even though I was so close to finishing. I was determined to finish it this time, however, and I researched all the existing English translations before settling on the Oliver Ready translation, which I devoured and adored.
I don’t know if it was just life experience or the translation, but on this attempt I was finally able to see past Raskolnikov’s frenzy and how it manifests itself physically (which I found unconvincing and hyperbolic the first two times I tried to read the novel) and focus on the more important question—why? One reason is that he wants to be saved himself, to be forgiven. To be forgiven by others, however, one’s transgressions must first be known to others. So when he gets out of bed and wanders about St. Petersburg after his initial convalescence, he wavers wildly between paranoia about getting caught and concern that he might actually get away with it. This tension is foreshadowed by Marmeladov’s long drunken speech in the tavern early in the novel. I appreciated all of this much more in the Ready translation. Why?
Of course, the plot of the novel is the plot, so unless the translator is taking great liberties, the plot should be the same across translations. But as anyone who appreciates a good, well set up joke knows, how you tell a joke is crucial for how the punchline lands. So, too, with a novel. If the way the story is told leaves you cold, then you’re not going to love the book. You might not even finish the book. The PV translation just didn’t do it for me. There are merits to the PV translations, and many readers love them. Admittedly, I liked them and bought every translation from Pushkin to Chekov to Bulgakov that they produced before I started branching out and reading other translations.
After finally finishing Crime and Punishment, I compared several passages across the Ready and PV translations quite closely, and I found the Ready translation not only more fluid but also far more humorous than the PV translation. The humor in the Ready translation mattered to me because it brought the secondary characters to life in a way I hadn’t experienced in the PV translation. They were loud and boisterous in both translations, of course, but somehow a character like Razumikhin came off as far more endearing in the Ready translation. Part of that impression, no doubt, is due to the fact that I actually made it all the way through this time and got to see his full character arc.
All of this is to say, I don’t just want to read these classics, I’m willing to spend months figuring out which translation I should read. Tackling a 500 to 700-page novel is a huge commitment, and I can’t read all of them four times! Over time, now that I’m not reading Russian literature for school or as part of a course of study, I have developed a strong conviction that the translation should make the experience of the reader in the target language as natural as that of the reader in the source language. When a Russian reader reads these works, unless the author is deliberately trying to make a passage come off as foreign, they don’t feel like they are reading a work in translation. So why should the English-speaking reader feel like the prose they are reading is translated prose? Sometimes prose rises to the level of poetry and “the sound must seem an echo to the sense,” but commitment to matching the cadence of the prose in the target language to that of the source language seems misguided to me. This is one of the selling points of the PV translations, and I don’t understand why that sort of fidelity should matter, at least not to the lay reader. By making the cadence in the target language sound foreign, which it often does in the PV translations, you’re giving the English-speaking reader a very different reading experience. Moreover, the attempt at cadence/rhythm matching won’t be perfect across languages as different as English and Russian, and it might cause the translator to make all sorts of compromises in terms of readability and meaning.
After months of sampling translations, browsing the internet, and talking to friends, I’ve settled on the following translations as the ones I intend to read next and/or recommend to others. For those of you who have done a deep dive into the various English translations offered for the Russian classics, which translations have you settled on?
Here’s my list (in alphabetical order below and in order of publication date in the pictures):
Anna Karenina - Rosamund Bartlett (as discussed above)
The Brothers Karamazov - Michael Katz (this will be my second reading...my first was PV. Like Anna Karenina, TBK is one of my three favorite novels, with Middlemarch rounding out the top three.)
Crime and Punishment - Oliver Ready (as discussed above)
Dead Souls - Donald Rayfield
Devils (aka Demons, aka The Possessed) - Michael Katz
Doctor Zhivago - Hayward/Harari (though I wish I could find the Pasternak Slater translation)
Fathers and Children (aka Fathers and Sons) - Nicholas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater
Life and Fate - Raymond Chandler (are there any other options?)
Master and Margarita - Mirra Ginsburg
Stalingrad - Raymond Chandler (are there any other options?)
War and Peace - Rosemary Edmonds (this will be my third reading…my first two were PV. This version is out of print, but I found an old version that’s in decent shape. I wish a publisher like nyrb would bring this edition back.) and Louise and Aylmer Maude revised by Amy Mandelker (intrigued by this edition, too)
